


Assorted Overwatch WIPs

by bellepeppertronix



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I might come back to these, M/M, Other, big on the hurt/comfort for the Music For Ghosts chapter, but i sort of...had to walk out of the overwatch fandom, hmm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 16:04:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13744467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellepeppertronix/pseuds/bellepeppertronix
Summary: Various Overwatch WIPs. I'm...not going to clean these up. I might come back and see if i can salvage them later, but...i don't know. If anyone is interested in hearing more about any of them, please let me know! <: )





	1. Sparrowcatcher

The first time Gabriel encounters Genji Shimada, it’s at the training range.  
Shimada is mowing down ranks of practice bots with a speed that masks his fury as ease; Gabriel sees who he assumes are his handlers, standing idly in the doorway, hands on hips and jaws slack. Ther eyes glued to him as he moved.

Only, Gabriel realized a moment later, the younger man was not using a gun--in fact did not seem to have any weapon drawn at all, but for the reddish arcs he saw cutting through the air, to embed themselves in the training bots a moment later.

He watched as the younger man rushed between two of the bots who were firing holo-rounds off; before Gabriel could properly see what he was doing, he had unsheathed the smaller of his swords and was actually parrying back the bullets, riddling the bots with their own rounds. They both exploded into sparking parts and pieces, to be digi-structed again when the next person reset the arena.  
Still he was not done. Rushing now into a more crowed area, he leapt high, shouted something in Japanese--and was enveloped in a brilliant green flash. Almost faster than Gabriel could watch, he becan cutting a swath through those bots, moving with a quick and deadly purpose. His shouts rang off the metal-reinforced stone walls, coupled with the bots’ yelping, and the minute, but frequent explosions as he dispatched them. 

The blade--the larger, now--had an edge that glowed a brilliant neon green, trailing light like an afterimage on an old camera.  
At the last second he ran past three bots without seeming to touch them--but when he paused, crouched slightly, behind them, all three exploded in quick succession, severed neatly through their middles.  
Finally he stopped, making a contemptuous noise, lashing at the air with the impressive blade before sheathing it. He turned to face the crowd that had gathered in the doorway, pivoting on the balls of his feet as perfectly as a dancer.  
“Don’t you have anything that is actually a CHALLENGE to fight?” he shouted.

Gabriel was taken aback. The voice he heard sounded digitized, his accent still coming through. Japanese? Gabriel wondered. He knew a guy, Rivas, who’d taken shrapnel to the neck and had had to have his vocal chords replaced with synthetic ones; the new recruit’s voice reminded him of that.  
Someone coughed. Two people actually exchanged glances and then turned to hurry away, apparently afraid that the man woul challenge them to a fight. 

Sopmeone else--Gabriel recognized the voice as Henry, one of the combat med-techs, called in return, “Dr. Ziegler told me to remind you not to strain yourself.”  
The other man scoffed--he made it sound like he was spitting--before striding closer, still radiating aggression like a banked heater.  
As he came closer, Gabriel realized a few things.

One, the young man was not, as he’d thought, wearing a tight layer of body armor. Or, well, he was--but the sort he was wearing, he couln’t exactly take off. The only visibly organic parts of him were one arm, an immaculate pectoral muscle, his shoulers, and his eyes; the top of his head was uncovered, the black hair there sweat-slick and sticking up everywhere.  
Two, the red ‘stripes’ he’d thought were on the body armor were actually cables, or possibly ducts, running from synthetic parts to organic and back again. 

Three, he had never even seen the young man before. He was running through a list of names in his head, trying with increasing worry to place which agent it could possibly be who could have had such a bad accident, or come back from a mission so mangled, that they would have required such extensive cybernetic work.

Before he could think up any names, however, the younger man had come even closer, and the crowd was abruptly thinning. People were greeting him with polite little salutes before scurrying away, evidently afraid of the new--recruit? Consultant? Gabriel had no idea who he was.  
One more thing on the list, he thought to himself, grimly. Why did it seem like, more and more, everyone was telling him nothing, or telling him all the important details LAST?

Before he coud begin to think too heavily on this, however, Henry noticed him, and smiling straightened up from teh doorway.

“Afternoon, Commander Reyes,” he said. Henry was tall and dark-skinned, with black hair trimmed into a fade that was salt-and-peppering prematurely. He saluted with one large, blunt hand, and Gabriel nodded once and returned it, before glancing back at the still-approaching man in gray.  
“Who’s that? I’m not sure I recognize him.”  
“Don’t worry about it, sir. I’d like to introduce our newest recruit, Genji Shimada! Shimada, this is--”  
The new guy stopped about a foot away from him--close enough that Gabriel could actually smell him--the smell of sweaty hair and overheated machinery, oily and slightly musky-sweet. He looked Gabriel up and down and muttered, “I am not an official AGENT. COMMANDER.”

He shouldered past, leaving behind what felt like a columnt of hot air.  
Gabriel felt like he’d been standing too close to a heater, his face prickling with after-warmth, sweat prickling his own scalp. His shirt felt too tight.

Henry sighed and shook his head. “Seems like Commander Morrisson might have gotten in over his hed with this one. Angela said he’s a real piece of work. Physically, mentally…” he made a helpless gesture and shrugged. “I’d better catch up wiht him and make sure he doesn’t try to challenge anybody to a fight or try to climb the cliff back up to the Watchpoint again.”

Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up, at hearing that. “AGAIN?”  
Henry turned back to face him. “Yes, again. Dr. Ziegler was very particular about me keeping him in line of sight.”  
Gabriel nodded, waving him off, too confused and stunned to do much else.

~

He was tired.  
In his office, the number of unread messages on his holomonitor wa so high he didn’t even glance at it more than twice; he got some water from the little dispenser he kept, shuffled over to the potted cactus he kept on the windowsill, and carefully tipped some into the planter. 

“Sorry I haven’t gotten you a new house yet, little guy,” he mumbled. He turned the pot around, half inspecting it, half inspecting the plant inside it. 

IT seemed like no matter how much work he did, more piled up. Most of those messages, he knew, would be emails from Overwatch higher-ups and UN officials, pissing and moaning about increasingly petty problems. 

At least one of the mesages was bound to be a complaint that they were exceeding the approved amount of toilet paper, or staples, or pillows. It wasn’t enough, apparently, that the UN expected Blackwatch to be their attack dogs--they also had to do it on a shoestring budget, with increasingly unstable agents who had increasingly unsavory pasts. When he’d tried to request an on-site counselor for these same recruits, he’d gotten a non-answer back from some obcure secretary, and had heard nothing since, despite asking again and again.

On the way to his office, he’d passed through the mess hall, where several agents had greeted him cheerfully.  
Too many more gave him blank looks as they saluted, stiff and formal.

He felt like his command was being shifted out from under him, his Blackwatch duties eating away at what he had left of Overwatch. Soon, he knew, when he would return from away missions, the only things he would get would be the stiff formal salutes--with no happy recognition in the eyes of the agents giving them.  
His stomach felt cold and hard.  
<>

~

“I thought Jack would ahve told you,” Angela said.  
“The only thing I was told was that we were running a sting operation against an important yakuza target, who controlled a large area and were funneling illegal guns to parts unknown.”  
“Well, Gabriel, you have been gone for almost two months,” Ana said.

“During which time you had the time to find, capture, and then help rehabilitate a member of one of the most notorious yakuza zaibatsu in the WORLD?” Gabriel said.  
Angela had the decency to appear embarrassed. 

“Everything was on a strict need-to-know basis,” Ana said. “Even I wasn’t notified of the complete details until after he’d already been here for weeks. It was done more for his safety than anything else,” Angela protested. “He was in such a precarious position that my team and I honestly were not even certain he would survive, or what sort of condition he would be in, if he were to live.”  
This only left Gabriel wondering if it had been Jack, or someone higher up, who had orered the secrecy. 

“So, what’s the prognosis?” he asked, finally, since he could think of nothing else to say.  
Angela and Ana exchanged a glance, before Angela said, “

~

“I thought you’d enjoy working with him,” Jack was saying.  
Eerything sounded distant and faint, as if he were hearing it from another room.  
“I know you have a way with…difficult recruits,” he said.  
His hand on Gabriel’s thigh was exhaling a clammy-hot warmth.  
*dissociating after sex.docx*

~

Up close, Gabriel could see the edge of scar tissue disappearing under the gray cybernetic mesh skin-armor. There would be multiple layers, he knew--the underlayer of synthetic skin, over which the armor itself was attached. There was a man beneath the armor, wounded. He tried to tell himself this as Genji advanced, all swagger and cruel, mocking sex, dripping desire like an aura that burned, that felt somehow sleazy and wrong and desperate. 

Gabriel was desperate. (He would try to tell himself, later, that what he was doing was meant to help. Even he didn’t believe himself anymore.)  
Seen even closer, the scar tissue was an angry, abraded red, probably rubbed raw with constant movement and exertion; either whoever designed the armor had not done proper range of motion analyses or, more likely, he was just pushing the various prostheses as far as they could go. Trying to force himself to have a breakdown on purpose, Gabriel throught. He thought of wounded birds, trying to fly with broken wings, breaking them worse still. The deepest part of him wanted very badly to take Genji and care for him, but sincerely--without the veneer of almost feral flirtation, without the predatory staring and posturing. (He wanted the tenderness--warm afternoons lying together, bringing him a bowl of soup. Lying together in the afternoon heat with just their sides touching, his head pillowed on Gabriel’s arm.)

(He remembered one of the early time with Jack, lying mashed together in one of the shitty standard-issue metal frame cadet cots, his leg slung over Jack’s hips and Jack’s head on his bicep; how in that pale not-light, Jack’s eyes had looked storm-gray instead of blue. The sleepy, blank effervescence of his smile in that light. The memory came like a shipwreck comes, exposed by the lowering tide, all its ruin laid plain in the air.) 

~

“It’s SYNTHETIC,” Genji spat, his lips twisting. “Want to see how much of the rest of me is fake, too?”  
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Gabriel said, gently.  
“You flinched, though, so you felt it, right?”

GEnji hissed an intake of breath and snarled something under his breath, low and fast in Japanese.  
“Does my body disgust you?” he asked, blunt and low.  
Gabriel had to pause and think long and very, very hard for a way to put his answer. “No, it doesn’t. We make the best with what we’ve got.”

Genji gave him a wary look that turned from wariness into a kind of incredulous, contemptuous laughter. He chuckled, low and harsh in his throat, before shifting his weight suddenly and cocking his head at him.  
“Then if that is the case, why don’t yuo demonstrate your lack of disgust by giving me the best you’ve got?” he said.  
It was a clumsy line, a pickup line and backhanded self-insult all rolled into one. 

~

Groping for closeness, for intimacy, while GEnji kept slamming himself backwards, hard enough that Gabriel knew it had to hurt.  
Leaning in for hugs and meeting jostling elbows instead, and afterwards in the dim reddish lighting shed by Genji’s optics, their ragged breath.  
The smell of hot machinery and sweat and sex, twisting hot and hard inside him, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to cut both ways.


	2. Null Sector

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Why did they just keep fighting mindlessly like that? Even the Bastions didn't try to heal themselves..."

They fight like they’re suicidal…I’m going to chalk this up to more than just poorly-programmed AI and say that maybe they aren’t actually even an Omnic extremist group…but a group of puppet omnics controlled by either a god AI or a human group hellbent on making omnics look bad at all costs. 

Story idea is from Tracer’s POV, because of course.

~

“I knew even back then that something was wrong…they fought like they were suicidal,” Tracer said. “I remember, one of them just stood there and…he was shooting at us, trying to destroy your shield, and I shot him two times as a warning. He fell but he got right back up and just…” she made a helpless gesture with one hand.

Lieutenant Reinhardt sighed and took a sip of his tea. “Fear is an excellent motivator. For some, fear of wat could happen after losing a battle can be worse than the fear of death.”

“So…you don’t think they’re being manipulated by anyone?” Lena asked, genuinely surprised.  
The older man was looking out the window, into the deserted exercise yard below. “I believe people make many decisions of their own free will. And they are not always easy to understand.”

~

She found Winston staring down at his tablet in the IT locker, with one of Athena’s tiny blue and white drones hovering around his head.  
“Hey, Winston!”

“Oh, Lena! Good afternoon,” he said. “How are you? Your flight wasn’t too long, I hope.”  
She laughed. “Not at all! We had a short layover, but it was harmless, all in all.” 

“So, what’s going on back on your side of the pond?” he asked, gently elbowing her in the side. She shorted a quiet laugh, shaking her head. 

“Chaos, complete and utter chaos. The holidays, then moving, then painting…never a moment’s rest.”   
For a moment she paused, wonering how, exactly, to put what she wanted to say. In the end she decided to just come out with it.   
“Actually…some of that chaos isn’t domestic, and it’s…not happy, either.”   
He made a noise of sympathy and set the tablet on a table nearby. 

She took a deep breath and then said, “Winston…some of the security footage of my first mission was just declassified. I was watching it, sort of for old time’s sake, and…well, because as terrified as I was, I do miss the old days of Overwatch. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you--I idn’t want to just…idly reminisce, I mean.” 

“Since our recent run-in with ____, I’ve had a lot of questions. And 

 

“I mean, I don’t think they


	3. Hanzo and Lucio try to hook up

“Wanna go someplace more comfortable?” Lucio had asked.  
They’d been in the transport carrier, returning from a mission in Dorado when he asked.   
And it wasn’t as if Hanzo could lie; he’d been eyeing him since their previous mission, but he’d been congratulating himself about being stealthy about it.  
Which just went to show that his skills were more atrophied than he’d thought, since--  
Lucio gently nudged his knee with his own, regarding him with a smile and a raised eyebrow.

Hanzo glanced around at the rest of their teammates--Mercy reading a briefing on her tablet, D.Va inflicting fictional violence against videogame characters in whatever game she was playing on her phone--and making a series of rather gruesome faces while she did--McCree and Soldier 76 asleep and leaned very, very comfortably against one another, (ewwww no…take this out…) and the others all sleeping, as well. They had all been talking of the down-time they were supposed to have, where they were going, what they were going to do.

He hadn’t added anything to the conversation because he’d been planning to do what he always did whenever he had spare time: more training, weapons maintenance, perhaps some idle kyudo, if he could find a dojo that allowed outsiders. It occurred to him that for a very long time he hadn’t done anything different at all.  
He looked back at Lucio and nodded.   
Everyone else was comfortable. Why shouldn’t he relax, as well? 

~

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but this was not it.   
After a drive through black streets lit brilliant with neon signs, they came to an old, old building that seemed to have once been a posh hotel. The front courtyard was shaped like a horseshoe and paved in brick, the building’s facade pinkish in the light from the streetlamps, with all the windows lit up like a picture. 

Inside, Lucio’s front door opened into the living room, which was decorated in black and bright green: black-painted floorboards, green walls, the entire back wall dominated by recessed glass shelves full of more mementos and objets d’art than he could take in a glance. To either side of the shelves there were floor-to-ceiling speakers, also set into the walls. 

There was a large-screen television mounted on the wall to the right, and a console table beneath it laden with game systems, disgorging wires into a tangle that curled and curved back into sockets all along the base of the wall.   
There was a huge black couch, curved like a half-moon, in the room’s center. 

Posters--things from videogames, other things from concert venues and some just interesting prints--plastered the walls.   
It was smaller than he expected, and rather narrow, the entire space seeming to pull itself upwards. 

“The shelves are pretty neat, huh?” Lucio asked, from behind him. “I know these glass artists who take waste-glass--broken bottles and stuff--and melt it down and do some really cool stuff with it.”

~

“What, handsome guy like you never had anyone flirt with you?” Lucio asked. His tones were still light and teasing, but the fingers of one of his hands slipping delicately into the sleeve of Hanzo’s coat. “I KNOW I’m not the only one to ask you out."

“That may be true,” Hanzo conceded. He shifted slightly closer.  
“But this is the first time in...quite a long time that someone has made such a concentrated effort.”  
“Well, that’s a damn shame,” Lucio said. “I guess that still makes me lucky, though, huh?”

They were close enough then that if he had leaned forward slightly, his chin would be on Hanzo’s sternum, his face upturned to look at him. Close as a kiss.   
Hanzo’s skin felt hot and tight with more than the stifling summer heat. 

After a moment, though, Lucio’s serious face wavered and he cracked a playful grin.  
“So...are you gonna kiss me or do you mind if I kiss you? ‘Cause...I mean, you ARE a handsome guy, so don’t get me wrong, the view’s terrific, but...”  
“But you would like to move things along?” Hanzo asked.

Behind them, the track on the sound-system flipped to something with a slower beat, and a woman’s voice, soft and sultry, whispering for the listener to come closer.   
Hanzo glanced sideways at the wall where there was the largest bank of speakers, and then back at Lucio, who giggled a little. “What? It’s Onra! You gotta know your modern composers.”

~

Beneath the thin knit material of the A-shirt he wore, he was lithe and slender as a greyhound, supple muscles twisting beneath skin. Just feeling him move slightly under his hands was enough that Hanzo could feel himself harden in his underwear, felt a bead of moisture escape him and soak into the material. He wanted to pull him closer, press their bodies flush and--

Lucio made a pleased noise into his mouth as he skated his hands down his sides and back up again, coming up beneath his shoulderblades and back down over his hips.  
“You can go lower, if you want, you know,” Lucio said, pulling away from him slightly.  
Hanzo made a thoughtful noise.  
“And...what if I do NOT want to?”  
Lucio leaned back again, pressing their hips closer together. The mesh basketball shorts he was wearing were paper-thin as it was, and at that angle his erection was maddeningly, perfectly pressed up alongside his own. 

Hanzo clenched his toes slightly in the rug, inhaling slow and deep through his nose.   
Lucio was still givn him an amused look, though. “Oh, sorry, I forgot.”  
“Forgot?” Hanzo asked. “What did you forget?”  
“You’re one of those ‘self-control at all costs’ guys,” Lucio said. “Which, that’s cool. Just tell me how far you want the ride to go so I know what we’re doing.”

How far did he want to go? Hanzo wanted him on his back, his magnificent legs curled between them while he fucked him slow and deep; he wanted to stretch him out on his side and straddle one of his legs, the other over his shoulder, so he could stroke his cock while he was inside him to feel him come; he wanted to lie him on his belly and just fondle his ass while he jerked himself off. 

“There is...” he began. “...I mean, there are very many things I would like to do with you.”  
“Yeah?”  
“Yes...”

Lucio kissed him very gently on the chin, and Hanzo closed his arms around Lucio, pulling him closer again. One hand went to the back of his neck, to where the hair at the base f his locs was densely-curled and cloud-soft. 

He was so happy, so guileless; and in the back of his mind he wondered, not for the first time, if Lucio would turn those sunbeam smiles on him if he knew what kind of man he really was. Would he say such things to him, he wondered, if he knew what he had done?

“I am sorry,” Hanzo said. When he pulled away he felt a weight like the universe dragging behind him. Weight of memories overlaid that he could not escape.  
He both hated himself and was embarrased and ashamed.  
“What? What’s wrong? Was I comin’ on too strong?” Lucio asked. 

He shifted away from him, his arms going from around Hanzo’s neck to his hands merely being on his elbows, loose enough that if Hanzo stepped back they would fall away entirely.  
“No, it is not that,” Hanzo said. 

How could Hanzo tell Lucio that he needed to be with someone who was better for him? Hanzo looked away, out the window with its breathtaking view of the city below.   
“Is it ‘cause I’m a younger guy?” Lucio asked, then. He sounded shy. Hanzo knew Lucio was leaning towards the direction he was looking in, trying to recapture his gaze.  
“...No, it is not that, either,” Hanzo said.   
Silence. Then, “Oh.”  
His hands fell away, then, and Hanzo could hear the soft sounds of his bare feet over the floor, the softer sound of the mattress shifting as he sat down.

Hanzo felt doubly embarrassed now that he had managed to accidentally hurt Lucio’s feelings; worse yet, he had no idea what to say to fix his blunder. These things were delicate, and not simple.

When Lucio didn’t say anything else, Hanzo turned towards the bed, walked over and sat in seiza at the foot of the bed, his hands curled into fists on his knees.  
“I...did not mean to insult you. If I could explain...” he trailed off, and when Lucio gave no sign that he was going to interrupt--or say anything at all--Hanzo sighed and soldiered ahead. “I am, admittedly, rather...out of practice at this. For so long, all I have ever been concerned with was my work, my missions...But it is unfair of me to drag all of that into the light here, when you were kind enough to invite me back with you to your home, into your bed. And--I am not...” Hanzo squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment, took a deep breath, and continued, “You are...a very good man, a hero to your people. I…I do not presume to put myself before you as an eligible candidate for a relationship. But still, I...I wanted...I thought...” 

He paused again, trying to decide if the grave he’d dug himself was deep enough. Then, “I apologize for any hurt I caused. It was not my intention.”   
He bowed before going to rise, one hand braced knuclles-down against the floor, when a warm brown hand touched his wrist gently.

“You don’t have to go,” Lucio said softly. “Listen, I...I get it. You get really caught up in work, in saving everyone, in fighting the good fight. We all do, I bet...You have to take care of YOU, sometimes, too, you know. And...as for the other stuff, listen. Everyone has done some bad things. I’m not gonna go out on a limb and start saying trite crap, but...it sounds like you’re doing your best to make up for what you did back then. Maybe it doesn’t feel like enough, but it’s SOMETHING.”  
He made a noise of agreement and nodded his head. 

It was only when Lucio withdrew his hand that he dared to look back up at him, though--honestly expecting him to eiher look annoyed and resigned, or angry. Instead he was still smiling, sitting with his chin on one knee and the other leg curled up under him.   
“Would you...give me another chance?” Hanzo asked.

“Aw, man, I dunno. I was just gonna lay here all sexually frustrated and then go to sleep alone. But if you insist...” he uncurled and stretched out, patting a spot on the bed beside himself.   
Hanzo laughed quietly as he joined him, brushing away the worries lurking in the back of his mind. 

~

“What will your fans say?”Hanzo asked, his lips pressed neat to his ear.  
Lucio looked up at him. “About what?”  
“The handsome old man you are currently cavorting with.”  
“They can be a little jealous,” Lucio said, laughing again, and Hanzo kissed him and felt like he was flying.

 

Hanzo is 5’8”   
Lucio is 5’3”

Oh my god   
Smawl Beens

Headcanons about Lucio’s hair: because i refuse to believe they gave that man 5 mega-locs. He actually has a lot of smaller ones that he braids up into the big locs to keep them together and out of the way in battle, but he doesn’t like to wear them in one big braid because it’s too easy to grab and also too heavy. The beads he has at the end of the big locs are actually clips. Orrr they’re faux-locs, which better explains how he so easily and quickly change length, color, thickness, number, etc.


	4. Lucio and D.Va Are Bestfriends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> also Lucio FINALLY hooks up with Hanzo

Hanamura was beautiful--a city that felt both stately and classic. The streets were full of low-slung ‘retro’ style mag-lev cars, and many of the older buildings had hardlight signs out front or even holo-signs proclaiming themselves to be national treasures.   
Those places were NOT where they were staying, of course.

Instead, they ended up in an old quarter of the garment district, now all but abandoned, with the shells of the charming old ubildings kept up only by city tourism committees. The neighborhood was thrown into semi-twilight with the daylight filtering down only diffusely: concrete risers stretched up between the old buildings, anchored in free spaces between them. High above there was the sound of traffic, car tires on asphalt, voices.  
Down below, it was quiet and cool. 

The building had once been a fabric warehouse, and before that a weaving company: in the lower story there were the vast, dusty, cobwebbed skeletons of the abandoned looms, old staved-in crates, built-in wall cubbies where there were even still a few old, dusty bolts of fabric. 

Their feet echoed hollow over the floorboards as they entered, everyone speaking in whispers. Morrison and McCree had already swept the place and secured it; so now they were moving in, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.

The fact that it was 3:45 in the morning in an all-but-abandoned neighborhood definitely helped. 

~

"OH! This is a great one, a classic!" Hana said, looping her arm through his and towing him towards the back of the arcade.  
There, against the wall, was a large VR area cordoned off with reflective tape on the floor; there was a raised dais for the dance. 

"They have ALL the dance games! B-Mania, Dance Dance Revolution, Stepmania...which do you want to play?"

It was new, one of the all-slot machines that featured a tall sleek cabinet with lines of neon-bright LED bars down its sides, and a huge monitor and flanked on both sides by double rows of even bigger speakers. The floor panels kept alternating a rainbow sequence, the colors scrolling across sideways.

Lucio could still remember the dusty old relic he'd first played on, the arcade with the faded red awning and the neon sign that never seemed to work. Inside smelled like cooking oil from the restaurant upstairs: to get into the arcade from the street, you went down a flight of narrow stairs (always stained with dried soda, gum, and an ever-present litter of wrappers, sometimes random plastic bottles and bags).

 

The machines Hana was used to playing on were new, practically state-of-the-art when compared to the old junkers he was used to. He wasn't sure if he ought to feel embarrassed by the memory or what.

Hana was busy cycling through the songs, muttering to herself in a mix of Korean and English.   
"Did I ever tell you I met the world champion for DDR? Well, he was the champion from, like, twenty years ago, but still. He was signing autographs at this event I was at a few years ago, and--”

Both of them jumped slightly, and turned with wide eyes to see Hanzo, of all people, standing there in the arcade doorway. 

He was wearing a black ringer-neck shirt with long sleeves and simple dark-colored jeans, and had left the yellow scarf in favor of a simple black hair tie: somehow instead of this making him look like a normal guy, it just served to make him look like a bouncer at a really nice club, or a coffeehouse hipster. 

"Those games are terrible for your aim," he said, matter-of-factly. "Most arcade owners do not calibrate them properly."  
Hana made a face at Lucio, muttering, "Old fart!"  
Lucio snorted into one of his hands.   
Hanzo made a displeased face at Hana.

"Sounds like someone can never get past the first stage of a rail shooter," she said.  
Hanzo scoffed slightly. "If that were the case and virtual zombies or aliens controlled by simplistic Artificial Intelligence were enough to kill me, I would have died dozens of times over in reality."  
"Then show us!"  
"I do not have time for such immature--"

Before he was finished, Hana turned to Lucio, snickering. "I'll bet he doesn't even know how to play anything here. There aren't any antiques!"  
"Many of the games here are installments in franchises older than YOU are," Hanzo pointed out. He was looking dispassionately at a game cabinet for House of the Dead 12.

Hana looked floored for a second before firing back, “Pfff, whatEVER! It’s not like I probably haven’t played the new, updated versions with better graphics and remastered sound ANYWAY!”  
“Yes, certainly. And with additional ‘Easy Mode’ settings, as well,” Hanzo added.

Hana rolled her eyes and scoffed again, crossing her arms over her chest. “Like YOU would know!”  
Hanzo raised one eybrow.   
“Uh, guys?” Lucio said.  
And that was how Lucio ended up sandwiched between the two of them, shooting their way through Wizard's Castle. 

Hana whirled and fired three shots with her crossbow, easily dispatching two of the neon-green holographic goblins that lunged out of a doorway. The third bolt lodged in the wood of the door-jamb.  
"Too easy!" she yelled, pumping her fist. 

There was a carillion of bells and a trumpet flourish, and a huge scroll dropped down from the ceiling in a shower of golden sparks, revealing their scores in ornately-written kana. After a second, it began to shift, altering character-by-character until the readout was in Chinese, then Korean, then English. 

Hana was at the top, followed by Hanzo, and Lucio was at the bottom.  
"AHA! See!" she trumpeted, jabbing her finger at her score.

"Only because you were spraying your shots everywhere. Look at your hit-to-miss ratio," Hanzo said. He sounded both tired and annoyed.  
"What, like that MATTERS? Don’t be a sore loser, Old Fart!" Hana said. 

Lucio whistled. "Hana, you were on FIRE! Look, you have the highest damage score.”   
Hana gloated, “Well, thanks! I’m glad SOMEONE isn’t too stuck up to congratulate the better gamer,” she said. She put one hand on her hip, and grinned smugly at Hanzo.  
Lucio added, “But he’s right, too, though. His hit ratio is literally 92%. Holy crap, man! That's amazing!" 

Hana flicked sweaty hair back over her shoulder, still laughing. "Of course his ratio is so good. He practices in real life with, like, actual arrows. I’d be good too, if every time I practiced, I knew that losing one would mean I’d have to spend the next six months making more by hand."

Hanzo started to protest, but Hana, with a devilish smirk, asked, “Do you catch and pluck the birds yourself, too?” (need to make it obvious that Hana is being Impish on purpose here, to needle Hanzo, because she thinks it’s Hilarious that he’s so, so stuck-up.)  
Before Hanzo could say anything in his own defense--or anything at all, really--Morrison was suddenly in the arcade's doorway, somehow seeming to radiate disappointment even through the dark aviators he was wearing. Even he wasn't still in uniform, having chosen instead to wear a dark blue motorcycle jacket over a white shirt and black jeans. 

Before Hanzo or Hana could say anything else embarrassing, Lucio said, "Hanzo was just demonstrating, uh, how some videogames' targeting systems aren't optimized, and how others are, and which ones are good for training."

If Morrison didn't beleive it, he didn't say so; instead, he grunted quietly and then said, "We're deciding what to do about dinner. If you want your choices and needs taken into account, you'd better come back to HQ."  
"Oh, we get a choice now? No more cardboard-flavored rations as food? Awesome!" Hana said. 

She practically flung the plastic crossbow-controller back at its wall holster and stepped out of the holo-VR cubicle--the game chimed a warning that Player 2 had exoted the arena--before she was charging ahead, running out the door. 

Lucio looked at Hanzo and laughed a little, shrugging, before he put his controller back on the holster and followed them out, very aware that, although Hanzo was waking beside him, he was completely silent. 

~

“We need RESOURCES--supplies, fuel, power cels--and we know there’s a drop-off point here,” Morrison tapped part of the map, which everyone leaned over, frowning--it was paper, drawn with blue architect’s ink. Winston must have spent ages on it; the safehouse they were at was an old fabric warehouse and had almost nothing in the way of technological amenities. 

Morrison continued, “Where we know the targets converge to move tech and supplies. We know they have useful things, so we’re going to kill two birds with one stone. This strike should both weaken them and get us the supplies we need so badly.” He tapped the map again, in a gesture of finality, and stood back.  
“Talon?” Fareeha asked.   
“No,” Morrison said. “Three Red Devils.” 

“So now we’re robbin’ random street gangs?” McCree said. He rotated the cigarillo he had clamped in one corner of his mouth to the other side, straightening from where he had been leaning against the wall nearby. 

“They are not a ‘random gang’,” Genji said, a moment later. “They were a significant force even when my family’s power was at its height. They are ruthless, and play by no one’s rules. My search for information tells me that in the void left behind by my family’s fall, they were one of the foremost powers to step up. Whatever you may have heard about them in the past, it is not true anymore. They are not to be trifled with.”

McCree whistled, a single low note. “Well, shit. If a former yakuza--no offense--is scared of ‘em, what the hell chance to us’n’our raggedy asses have?”  
“I am not offended. But I also did not say I was afraid of them, only that they were formidable. And we do not need chance,” Genji said. “We have two Shimadas.”

The fight: they ambush the bad guys, do some Serious Damage, Lucio uses his sonic boom field thing to knock a bunch of them off their truck, which Tracer and D.Va then highjack and they’re about to drive away with. But the bad guys regroup too soon and they’re closing in on them and Hanzo and Genji are only two guys, okay--  
So Lucio gets between them and the guys and knocks them back, but right after that one of the guys gets a shot off and he only manages to get a partial shield up, so the shot knocks him backwards and off his feet--and right back onto the truck’s bumper, kind of ribs-first, which, ouch--

And then Hanzo and Genji finish them up and Lucio is all ‘Oww my fucking ribcage, oww’ and they all pile into the truck and drive off to a safe-site where they transfer the stuff into one of their own trucks. Soldier 76 takes the truck to ditch it, everyone else unpacks gear while Mercy looks over Lucio. He’s fine--no bullet wound--but his back and ribs are all bruised up where he was slammed into the back of the truck. She heals the worst of it and tells him that the rest just needs time to get better, gives him some pain meds, and tells him to rest.

“Lucio? Lucio! How badly is he hurt?” Angela was saying.   
Everything was weirdly crisp and clear. Breathing hurt; standing upright hurt; lying down hurt. He wondered if his amplifier was damaged, and if so, how badly.

“Those assholes shot him!” Hana said. She was holding his hand so tight his fingers were starting to ache. He kept squeezing back, mostly because at least THAT pain was voluntary. 

A second later Doc Z was leaning over him, a penlight in hand.   
“Lucio?”  
“...Hey, Mercy,” he whispered.  
“Lucio, where were you hit?”

“I wasn’t,” he explained. “Well, I mean, i don’t...i don’t have a bullet wound. He shot me in the chest and I fell wrong. I think--I think i hurt my ribs.”  
Mercy was nodding as he explained this, taking his pulse. She checked his eyes with the penlight, checked his ears for blood. 

A moment later she stepped back, pulling out a small machine that looked something like a calculator combined with a remote control.   
“What’s that for?” he asked.  
“This is my prototype for a portable x-ray machine. It reads in real-time, and there is no need for you to take anything off. Please sit up as straight as your comfortably can,” she said.

She looked significatly at Hana--who looked torn for a long moment before giving Lucio’s hand a last squeeze.  
“I promise I won’t die in the couple’a seconds it’s gonna take Doc Z to look at me, okay?” he said.

She scoffed and rolled her eyes, but he could see she was biting her lip to hide how it was trembling.  
But Hana stepped outside the white plastic sheeting Mercy was using as a partition, peeping her head around the edge.

Dr. Ziegler took a few steps back, held up the device, and tapped its screen a few times. A square grid of green light flashed over Lucio’s body.   
“All right. I need three more. Can you lift your arms?”  
“Sure,” he said.

When he tried he found out that was a mistake. He could only get his elbows up about halfway to armpit height before it was excruicating.  
“Please, do not strain yourself! If that is as high as you can raise them, that is fine,” Dr. Ziegler said hastily. The green grid flashed two more times, one from each side, before she told him he could drop his arms and rest.  
Hana rushed back in and grabbed his hand again. 

Dr. Ziegler had gone over to her computer, setting the scanner on a small dock beside the monitor. Her back was to Lucio but he knew enough to know that when a doctor was looking at test results and was eerily silent, it wasn’t a good thing.  
“So, uh...what’s the damage?” he asked.

“Is he going to be all right?” Hana demanded. Then, before Angela could answer, she tunred to Lucio and squeezed his hand between both of hers. “You’re going to be fine!”  
And then, a second later she turned to Dr. Ziegler and said, “He’s going to be FINE!”  
“I’m pretty sure i’m not dying,” Lucio said. But when he chuckled, the movement made him cringe and groan, clutching at his aching ribs.

Hana jumped off the stool she was sitting on. “SOMETHING’S WRONG!”  
Dr. Ziegler turned around, brushing imaginary dust off her clothes and clapping her hands together once.  
“Hana, if you cannot remain calm and refrain from causing my patient stress, I will have to ask you to leave my infirmary.”

Hana sat back down on the stool very forcefully, her hands jammed into her armpits and her lips pursed tight.   
Dr. Ziegler nodded once at her, not unkindly, and then turned to Lucio. “Well, I have good news. This is much simpler than it could have been. Lucio, you have two fractured ribs.” She stepped aside to let him see the monitor, highlighting two areas where on the screen his ribcage glowed up in a pale-green relief against a black ground. There were cracks thin as threads in two of his ribs, towards the middle of his back.  
“That’s a good thing?”

Dr. Ziegler smiled. “Yes. It appears your sonic shield took the brunt of the damage; clearly you have no bullet wounds. Actually you are very fortunate these are not lower,” she said. “Floating rib fractures tend to take much longer to heal, and often with worse outcomes.”

She trained the yellow energy beam on him and he just laid back and tried to breathe without flinching, which got easier and easier as time went on. After maybe half an hour, Mercy came back to check on him, re-scanning his torso.

“Ah, excellent! Your ribs are all but healed. By tomorrow the acceleration effect should ahve completely repaired the damage to you bones. But Lucio,” she cautioned, “The beam does not fix everything. You may still have some bruising and soreness. If that is the case, please come by again and i will give you something for the pain. All right?”  
“Yeah! Thanks, Doc Z,” he said. 

 

**Headcanon: D.Va’s thing is that she’s...never really had ‘friends’, per se. Fans, of course, sicne she’s literally been a FAMOUS gamer since she was 16, and we assume well-known since even before then. How...does that fit in with school??? IDK. What i DO know is she had very few friends, so she’s all AAAAA LUCIO DON’T DIE because he’s her FRIEND, the first real friend she’s had in a very long time. I feel like she’s also orobably the type to be a perfectionist who does everything to 110% of her ability, OR she doesn’t do it at all. She also has a competitive streak a mile wide that she DOES NOT know how to let go of, so for her, ‘friendly competition’ can turn bad pretty fast. She doesn’t even mean to scare people away, it’s just that her entire identity is tied up in gaming and how good she is (was? I doubt she’d ever seriously retire until she literally couldn’t hold a controller anymore). Plus i assume she had friends in MEKA who...probably didn’t make it. She’s young and losing friends at ANY age can scar you for life. So she’s all LUCIO LUCIO OMFG LUCIO ARE U OK???? For a good reason. Also she goes 1,000 mph in all directions at all times unless focusing on a game or mission. Then nothing BUT the mission objective matters.**

“Lucio needs recuperation time. He ABSOLUTELY cannot go back into any combat situations in the state he’s in.”  
“Guess I’ll guard the fort,” Lucio said, smiling. it had sounded funny in his head.He wished he felt it as keenly as he said it.

“’Course you will, kid, and I’m sure the place couldn’t be in better hands,” McCree said. He gently patted his shouler in lieu of his usual thumps on the back.

~

The sleeping arrangements were dormitory-style, which seemed like an excellent idea in theory.   
In practice, what happened was that everyone immediately rushed to set up their own private areas, using any curtaining material they could find. 

Dr. Ziegler set up a makeshift infirmary in the farthest corner in back, cordoned off by plastic painter’s drop-cloth. She’d had to set up a number of gray plastic shipping crates in lieu of cots or seats, and was using an enormous wooden-topped tailor’s cutting table as an operating table, so it wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

Beside her area was Winston’s tech hub--which at that point was nothing but three monitors, one good computer, and three tower servers. Next to it Lucio had an area for his gear, -- 

The rest of the second floor was personal areas, the center of the room being designated as the common area because a) there were no rafters there to hang makeshift curtains from, and b) it was so hot and humid, everyone wanted to be as close to a wall as possible, just to catch the faintest IDEA of a breeze. 

In her curtaind-off ‘room’ across the way, Hana was still editing her video of the earlier fight, pausing occasionally to curse at her computer and get up to pace back and forth. The old, faded Pokemon sheets she was using as a curtain were slightly transparent; the blue-white light from her monitor turned everything in front of it into a stark, crisp silhouette.

Lucio decided he was going to face the wall if he wanted to get any sleep at all and not sear his retinas trying.   
Someone was typing, quietly and slowly, and he could hear Winston’s voice rumbling quietly as he talked to Athena. He must have had a headset on, because Lucio didn’t hear the AI’s voice responding. 

~

Lucio was laying flat on his stomach, breathing shallowly to accommodate for his bruised ribs and really, really wishing Doc Z’s healing beam had enough charge to heal him more.  
His face was mashed into the scratchy lining of his sleeping bag, and if he breathed too deeply he flinched.

He’d already taken one of the pain pills so he wasn’t actively writhing in agony, but lying there unable to so much as put his arms over his head or stretch was getting to be too much. 

And then Hanzo was there, outside the dark green sheet Lucio had hung up in lieu of a door. He cleared his throat politely.

“Oh, uh. Hey, man.” Lucio said. He waved weakly from where he was laying. He sat up--wincing as he did--and said, “Come on in. Make yourself right at home.”  
Then Hanzo was holding the sheet-curtain aside with the back of one hand, half-kneeling, half-crouching on the floor. Lucio could see he had something in a small black drawsttring bag in one hand. 

He stood up, took exactly one step, knelt again, and twitched the curtain closed before turning to face Lucio again.  
It was a nice gesture, even if it didn’t do much to cut the sounds from the rest of the place.

Lucio didn’t really know what to say--he hadn’t spoken to Hanzo much, aside from the event that had happened at the arcade, which had been so random he’d almost convinced himself he’d imagined it. 

But there the guy was, sitting on his heels right inside the curtained enclosure.  
The whole area wasn’t much bigger than a king-sized mattress all around, and Lucio was already lying stretched out on his unzipped sleeping bag, feeling embarrassed because even in the small area, it was kind of junky. After getting back and changing, he’d been in too much pain to stow any of his stuff, so he had gear everywhere: under-armor, compression sleeves for his legs, socks. His skates, however, he’d carefully stowed in their case, along with the leg-guards, at the foot of his sleeping bag. (…why osn’t he using Rejuvenascencia?…? maybe make up smth about it being damaged?) 

~

“Oh! Muscle rub! Thanks, man!” Lucio said, and meant it. He wasn’t sure exactly how he was going to put it on himself, seeing as how if he so much as raised an arm too high, or tried to bend his torso at all, the muscles all down his back felt like they were going to erupt in flames. “You didn’t have to do that,” he said.

Hanzo dipped his head briefly, and then said, “If I had not hesitated, you would not have been hurt in the first place.”  
Lucio scoffed lightly, at that. “Oh, what, this? Shoot, this ain’t nothin’ but a couple bruises. I’ll be fine in a couple days.” 

“That was an excellent tactic to you used to force them to disperse,” Hanzo said.   
“Hey, man, thanks! Figured that one out working on corporate Vishkar guards. They, uh, don’t like to use firearms so much; looks bad for PR. ‘Cause, you know, beatin’ someone up with a nightstick or baton is so much more humane, you know?” Lucio snorted. “Fewer bodies that way, too…”

Hanzo gave him an unreadable look, at that. “I...had been meaning to ask...”   
“About the whole ‘freedom fighter’ thing?” Lucio said, and then laughed a little.   
He never really knew how to explain this to people who had heard about it second-hand.  
Hanzo hesitated and then said, “Er...well...yes.”   
Lucio shrugged a little--then immediately winced again.

Hanzo’s hand was cool on his shoulder a moment later, the pad of his thumb sinking neatly into his (the big shoulder muscle on top by the neck; my fuck) in a way that made him wince AGAIN, riding the edge between pain and pleasantness.   
“Forgive me. I think I am being too rough,” Hanzo said.

“Maybe a little,” Lucio conceded. “But thanks for putting the stuff on at all, man, really. I’m pretty sure Hana’s worried enough without having to SEE my jacked-up back up close, you know? And, uh, I didn’t want to wake Doc Z, and 76, McCree, and Winston are...well, y’know.”

To his surprise, Hanzo actually laughed. Well, a low chuckle, but he was smiling, amused. “It is not their fault, but i fear your assessment is correct--they all seem to have learned strength but not restraint, or the knowledge of when its use is inappropriate.”

“You can’t forget that with corporate goons, cops, even private security cops, they always move the same ways: formations, lines. If you can get them to scatter, they’re weak at the back.” Lucio was saying. “It’s different with gangs. They’re not formally trained--mostly--so they’re really unpredictable.” 

Hanzo made a thoughtful noise behind him, his warm hands moving lower on his back again, a nice contrast to the tingly coolness of the liniment. 

“Hey, man, where’d you get this stuff anyway? It works great! I’m already starting to feel better.” Lucio said.  
Hanzo hesitated, then chuckled. “You would not believe me if I told you.”  
Lucio craned his neck to avoid twisting at the waist when he turned to look back at him. 

“Oh, yeah? Try me.”  
“It is a three-hundred-year-old recipe sold by a two-hundred-year-old shop.”  
Hanzo’s mouth remained firm but his eyes sparkled.   
“Bullshit,” Lucio said at last, and Hanzo laughed a little.   
“I told you that you would not believe me!”

“No, really, man, I’m serious! I could really use some of this. I get, like, mad leg cramps sometimes, skating everywhere. Icy-Hot and Tiger Balm only do so much, you know,” he said.   
“I was not joking. If you would like, I can take you there tomorrow.” Hanzo said. 

A moment later the gentle, raspy warmth of his hands was gone, and Lucio could hear soft, quiet osunds of fabric, presumably as he wiped his hands off.  
He shuffled around on his knees awkwardly, turning to face the other man, and found him wiping his hands on a small dark blue towel. 

~

The park was empty, the streetlights just coming on. The sound of cicadas was so distant it was almost pleasant, instead of being almost earspitting as it usually was.  
Hana stuck her arms out, flailing lightly, her feet wobbling back and forth in place.  
After a moment she regained her balance--only barely. She was hunched like an old lady, her butt stuck out with her arms stuck out in front of her. 

“There! This is...this is so HARD, why do you DO this?” She said. She inched one skate forward and almost ended up sliding down into a split--if Lucio hadn’t grabbed her under one arm to help steady her.   
He laughed a little. “It’s fun once you get used to it! Come on!”

“You’re so, so lucky my fans said they wanted me to try this,” she said. After a moment she reached up and touched one of the buttons on her pink headband, and a pink hard-light visor arced across her face, stretching over her eyes from one ear to the other.  
“Okay. Okay! My cameras are on. Ohhh. Oh, I had better not fall, it will RUIN my cred online--” she was muttering. “SO not using this audio, either, OMG…”  
“Ready?” Lucio asked.  
“What?” she said.   
“Come on!”

“No!” she turned to him clumsily, grabbing at him to stay upright. He never let her go, just helped her steady herself on her feet.   
“I’m not gonna let you go! Come on, just with one hand. Put one skate forward--don’t pick up your foot, just slide it. There you go!”

Hana slid one skate forward, half-raising her foot to plant it like she expected to and aborting the movement halfway through. “How can anyone get used to this?” She demanded, wobbling where she stood.

Lucio laughed a little more. “Well, I MIGHT have been skating since i was...huh, lemme see...eight or nine...and hey, actually you’re diong this the hard way. Most people learn on a pair of rollerskates.”

Hana, who had been glaring down at the kardlight blades on her feet as if they were particularly treacherous thin ice, looked back up at him in puzzlement. “What? Rollerskates? Like...really? Like in those old American cartoons?”  
“Yeah!”  
“They still MAKE those?!” she blurted. 

“Well, we can’t all live in countries with bleeding-edge hard-light tech that just any old body can walk in off the street and buy,” he said, still smiling.

This time Hana bit her lips and frowned. “Hey, can you...can you help me to sit down? I really don’t want to break my tailbone when I’m still just on the ‘tutorial level’.”  
Lucio snorted a laugh. “Don’t worry about it. Besides, I’m sure no one would fault you for bombing out of the tutorial if the first time you play the game it’s set to ‘Expert Mode’.” he said. He skated around to behind her, and put his hands on her hips.

“What are you doing!”  
“I’m gonna push you! All you have to do is stay on your feet. Okay? Keep your knees bent a little--yeah, like that--and...here we go!”

They made it to a park bench without any incident, and sat down side-by-side. Hana kept accidentally clacking her skates against his, and he kept elbowing her in the side, until fnally she shoved him, laughing.   
“You wanna call it quits?” 

“No way! I don’t QUIT! Git Gud or Go Home!” she said, raising clenched fists and stomping one foot. The skate immediately caused her leg to shoot outwards, her foot friisng in the air before clattering back down on the pavement. She looked mortified for two seconds before smoothing the expression off her face.   
Lucio snorted a laugh. “Okay, okay!”

“Listen...I’m sorry about all the stuff I said. About. Stuff.” Hana said. Her eyes darted to his face and then away again, dropping her chin. (oh god she HAS to be more eloquent here. Just have her say something about how she was accidentally thoughtless and apologize sincerely.)  
“Well, I wouldn’t change where I’m from or what I went through. IT’s what made me who I am.”

Hana was silent a long moment. Now the lights were on, some other couples were starting to show up, holding hands or walking dogs. Lucio pulled his hood up, tucking his locs down the back of the hoodie.  
“Looks like it’s getting kinda crowded. We should get back,” he said.

~

Genji altered his with an inverted flip off the wall, landing silently on the patch of grass.  
Lucio cruised up on the pavement beside the grass, his fists in his armpits, grinning in amusement.

“Okay, okay! I see you there. I mean, I dunno about all that flippin’n’stuff, but...tell me what you think about this?” he cruised back beside the wall casually, before turning in a graceful arc. A moment later he was skating back towards Genji, moving fast, before crouching and springing at the wall--and then just as gracefully moving in an arc UP the building’s straight, sheer side. His skates described a green arc on the side of the building and he was climbing, curling into a graceful tuck before he pushed off again. When he landed back on flat ground he continued to cruise, turning around and skating backwards to where Genji was sitting. 

Genji laughed and clapped; Lucio skated in a figure-8 to slow himself down before cruising back over to the patch of grass. 

“You know he has a crush on you,” McCree said.   
Hanzo almost dropped the arrow he was currently fletching; he looked back over at McCree with wide eyes.  
“What?”

McCree’s own face was sly. “You know what I’m talkin’ about, pardner, don’t play games. This ain’t my first rodeo and I’m pretty sure it ain’t yours, either.”  
After a long moment of maintaining a straight face, Hanzo scoffed softly and snickered. Hanzo mumbled, “How can you say these things with a straight face?”

“The same way YOU can run around dressed like that with a straight face!”  
“That’s different!” Hanzo said. “This is a completely practical way for an archer to dress. I cannot fight properly with excess garments hampering my movements.”  
“Didja really need all those words to say ‘western clothes are too tight for me an’ my gigantic biceps’?”

Hanzo looked over at McCree and rolled his eyes. “I would never have said something so blunt. Unlike SOME of us, I happen to have TACT.”   
Hanzo looked very pointedly at McCree’s belt buckle, which he covered with his folded serape a moment later, swearing and laughing. 

~

“And did you see that?” Hanzo was saying. “That--that leap he did?”  
“I did, brother, I was right there,” Genji said.  
“He--he--I had to practice for YEARS before I could do anything so complicated! And HE can do it, even with those--those--” (the translator crapped out for a moment) “--contraptions on his feet!”

“I suppose he has probably also practiced for years, Brother,” Genji said. His voice was bland. He added three more crocus to the pile of origami flowers to his right, which Hanzo finally seemed to notice.  
“Why are you making so many of those?”

Genji stiffened slightly. If he’d had a visible face, Lucio figured, he’d be blushing.   
He said, very quietly, “They are...gifts for a friend.”  
Hanzo frowned slightly, then a smirk crossed his face. “Why don’t you just buy this ‘friend’ some real flowers?”

“Because crocus are not in season right now, so any real ones would not look...right.”

**suddenly Hanzo’s POV???**  
“It’s the rhythm of life, my man! Listen: I figured out the exact vibration adn modulation needed to accelerate human cell repair. Plus, it’s a beat you can dance to! Gets your heart pumpin’, gets your blood going!” Lucio said. 

He shadowboxed for a little bit, dancing away from Hanzo on the tips of his toes, before suddenly his movements went fluid and loose. He faked his way through a few capoeira kicks and one half-leap, his arms going wide and splaying in midair for a moment before he twisted like a cat and landed again on his feet. He was still grinning, and danced a few more steps before pausing, raising one eybrow at Hanzo’s bewildered face.  
“What was that?” Hanzo asked.

Lucio looked back at him and saw him with slightly widened eyes.  
“Oh, uh,” he said, feeling sheepish suddenly. “Capoeira! My aunt runs a studio. I used to mostly mess around, and I like the more dance-y stuff over the fighting stuff, but hey, it’s all good, right?”

Hanzo mouthed the word silently for a moment before saying it aloud. “Capoeira. What is that?”  
And that was how they ended up sitting side-by-side in front of Lucio’s laptop, watching capoeira videos.   
*drop in the Capoeira Thing from te scratch pad here*

~

“And then I thought, there is no way he would--look at me like that. With eyes like that,” Hanzo said. “I resigned myself to watching you from afar and keeping my distance. I did not want to interfere. You have your career, your music...” He trailed off. Then, “I understand completely if you do not ever wish to speak to me again, or be alone with me. I only want you to know that I--”

“Hanzo,” Lucio said, gently. “I don’t hate you. NONE of us hate you. Genji doesn’t even hate you. I think you think we all feel the same way about you that you feel about yourself.” He paused. “You wanna know what I thougth when i first met you? Honestly?”  
Hanzo looked at him, guarded but curious. “What?”

Lucio smiled a little wider, rocking where he sat. “I thought, ‘Holy shit, i wonder who did his tattoo!’”  
Hanzo glanced down at his arm, the thundercloud on his brow suddenly dissipating.   
“You--you really thought--!”

“Yeah, man! Look, I kinda collect ‘em. This one,” he gestured at his own shoulder, “Is just the most visible one I got. I got a bunch.”  
Hanzo frowned thoughtfully a moment later. “But I have seen you without a shirt on. Where...”

Lucio bit his lips and waggled his eyebrows, and Hanzo actually LAUGHED again.   
“Yeah? Yeah! An’ if you want I can show you later...” he said.   
Hanzo’s smile dimmed slightly, at that.   
“I…should tell you something.” Hanzo said.  
“Sure, anything,” Lucio said.

“I...do not know what you see in me. Truly.” He looked away from the younger man.  
“Hey! Hey, come on, don’t be like that to yourself. You’re a handsome dude with rippling muscles, a sweet tattoo, and a freakin’ bow! What’s not to like?” Lucio said, teasing.   
When Hanzo only smirked a little and shook his head and still refused to look at him, Lucio added, “Really, though. You’re driven and you’re serious and you’re just trying to do what’s right. Even if that’s just owning up to your mistakes and fixing them. I respect that.” Lucio said.

Finally Hanzo looked back at him. He had been staring at the floor, but his eyes had grown wider and wider as Lucio spoke, before finally he looked back at him, surprise all over his face.  
“You…should not flatter me like this. You don’t know what I have done.”  
“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future,” Lucio said. “My grandmother used to say that.”

**they both got ready to bottom and then...lol. So then Lucio fucks Hanzo first, then Hanzo fucks Lucio. They do basically all the positions Hanzo wanted. Ummm there was something else, some other positions, oh my god it was so hot why didn’t i write it down??? :(((( ah well, maybe i’ll remember. ANYWAY they both fuck and then trade places for who’s topping and who’s bottoming halfway through. Ohh ohhh it was when Hanzo was bottoming for Lucio, he was laying on his side with a leg over Lucio’s shoulder. Lucio is good at handjobs and Hanzo has archer’s calluses, something Lucio defintely lacks. Then later when Lucio was riding Hanzo, he was also fingering Hanzo and Hanzo was a wet, sloppy mess and good times were had by all. Yaye for all**

“Oh, you--” Lucio began.  
“I thought--” Hanzo said, at the same time.  
They were both awkwardly silent for a long moment. Then Lucio laughed. Hanzo followed suit a moment later, and for awhile they just sat there together, breathing each other’s air. 

Lucio said, “So, uh, you like bottoming better than--”  
“Well, I enjoy both equally, but I did not want to be...rude or...intimidating,” Hanzo said.

~

Lucio kicked a leg over Hanzo’s thick thigh and pressed one foot flush against the metal casing on his prosthetic calf, sighing deeply.  
Hanzo’s chuckle was warm and gravelly against the top of his head. “I thought you said my legs were cold,” he said.

“That was before,” Lucio said, matter-of-factly. “Now I’m all hot and bothered and they’re nice and cool.”

Hanzo laughed again, breathing deep and steady through his nose, pressing small kisses to Lucio’s ears and across the crown of his head, as casual as you like. 

*okay so the way the skates work--headcanon time--the leg parts Lucio uses for the skates are just for extra speed and defense, and the skates themselves are separate pieces. He has more than one pair of skates--those are just ‘common’ hard-light-bladed skates, the kind used in their world by pro-athletes--hockey players, figure skaters, etc. He has an extra pair just for cruising around, and THAT pair is one of the type that you can just attach to a pair of shoes (they kind of attach to the bottom of the shoe). He lets Hana borrow the cruising pair because she asked him for a demonstration ‘for her fans’ and totally NOT because she wants to learn how to skate. No sir. Make with the cute friend stuff. Also romance with Hanzo. Somehow. *


	5. Music For Ghost Chapter Roughs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you're looking for Music For Ghosts, these are some pieces of unfinished chapters.

“If you cooperate with us, we are prepared to release you to your…organization. If you choose to continue to be combative, we will have no choice but to turn you in to the proper authorities.” She looked at him, al sternness and severeity, now, before continuing, “I think it goes without saying that the list of crimes for which you will be found guilty is quite lengthy.”  
“Look, I’m not signing over NOTHING to NOBODY,” he said.  
She sighed, and finally actually LOOKED at him. Her eyes were really startling--an amber-gold he had never seen before. He wondered if she’d had them augmented, if they weren’t those camera-eye implants that had been so popular in Japan, or if they were just cosmetic. If maybe this wsn’t some other information-gathering technique they were trying on him.  
“Very well. I must admit, I had higher hopes for the first meeting with the creator of such unorthodox, yet interesting, uses for our technology. I see now that this meeting was a waste of time.”  
He didn’t even respond. She stood, adjusted her coat AGAIN, and then left the room.  
Later, they sent in a tray of food, which he again refuse to touch; the only thing he took was the sealed water-bottle, knowing and hating that even those could be tampered with.  
The hunger kept him awake, gnawing at his guts and ribs; it had gone from mere rumbles now to an active, alive thing, making his legs cramp and his head feel like it was packed full of hot wool. 

~

When he woke up, he smelled smoke and the muddy smell of old blood--strangely familiar, now.  
“YOU’RE springing me?” Lucio asked, shocked. He was too hungry and exhausted to do more than ask; even jumping up was too much of a task, now.  
Reaper didn’t say anything at first, just took out a flat black slab of plastic, peeled one of its sides off, an slapped it down on top of the wall’s lock panel.  
“Uh? Hello?”  
“Your ‘team’ is inept. They’re actually trying to talk it out with the Vishkar PR shirts. Get up,” Reaper said.  
Lucio stood up, feeling like the whole thing was surreal. His head was swimming; how long had it been since he’d had anything but water?  
“Are you drugged?” Reaper asked.  
Lucio started to shake his head, then hesitated. He wouldn’t know, would he? As it was, he wasn’t even sure how long he’d been there.  
“What’s going on? How long have they had me here?”  
“Two days. Long enough,” Reaper growled. “Do you have any IDEA how hard it is to do anything when their security is this tight? They really seemed to think your team would come with force.”  
Lucio felt very small, and part of him was deeply saddened; the other part of him, the more pragmatic, was aware of what it might have cost the team to try to run a mission just to get him out.  
Especially when he shouldn’t have gotten caught in the first place.  
“What are we doing?” Lucio asked finally.  
Reaper turned to him and was silent for a beat, before he said, “Making this look good.”  
Lucio had enough time to ask what he meant before the other man shot him, point-blank, in the gut.  
Pain and blue-white numbness spread outwards from the point of impact; he grabbed at his stomach, dimly aware that he couldn’t feel his hands touching himself, and when he staggered backwards, Reaper caught him.  
He was trying to say something to him. Lucio went from clutching his stomach to clawing at Reaper’s arms, the armor, his mask. His vision swam, then blurred into nothing.

~

When he woke up, it was to alarm clock lights’ red glare on his face, feeling like he’d never been so cold in his life.  
Shivering, he went to sit up and flinched; just to the left of his navel there was an aching spot. His hands shook as he fumbled with the hem of the shirt, groaning and struggling to make his fingers cooperate to lift it. A dermal patch was plastered there. It was translucent blue; beneath it, he could see a purple bruise the size of a coin, shaped like a pair of thick, raised concentric ring: Reaper had shot him with some kind of hypo dart.  
Panic about what might have been in it started to grab at him--he looked up at his surroundings and found himself in a completely nondescript room, with white walls, a floor with shitty low-pile carpet that looked no particular color in the dim, dim red light coming from the alarm clock on the night-stand. The clock was an ancient early-digital thing, looking like it was mae sometime in the 1990s, and either broken or had yet to be programmed; instead of displaying time, it was flashing on an off as a series of zeroes.  
He was lying on a naked mattress, on top of--he saw huge shoulderpads and black cloth and realized belatedly that it was Reaper’s coat. He’d been covered with a scratchy military surplus blanket that had a few small holes burnt through one corner. The room door was closed, and the entire place was silent.  
His feet were almost painfully numb.  
Still, he forced himself upright, staggered with difficulty towards the door. When he tried to make his hand close around the knob it was like staring at someone else’s hand, impossibly far away; the numbness was like static buzzing up his arm, radiating upward from his fingertips. On his second try he managed to actually open the door.  
It opened into a narrow hallway; there was one door diagonally to the right from his, a bathroom, with the door standing ajar. The end of the hallway looked out into a bare-seeming living room on one side and a kitchen with white lino-tile floors and brown cabinets, and nothing on the countertops on the other.  
Half-supporting himself against the wall, he proceeded down the hallway.  
Reaper caught him right as he reached the hall’s end and his knees buckled. 

“What did you dose me with?” he muttered, through clenched teeth.  
“Nothing that would kill you. I just needed you unconscious to get you out of there. Drink,” he said, and pushed a bottle of water into Lucio’s hands.  
Lucio figured if the guy was trying to kill him, this was a really roundabout way to do it; still, he squeezed the bottle and covertly inspected it to look for leaks. When he saw none, he tried to twist the lid off, fumbling and swearing.  
Reaper took it from him, grumbling softly, twisted off the lid, and handed it back.  
“Why am I so cold?”  
“It’s a side effect of the sedative. There are more blankets. You should have stayed down.” Reaper said, standing, hauling Lucio up with him.  
For a minute Lucio wondered if he was going to pick him up bridal-style and carry him down the hallway, but Reaper pulled Lucio’s arm up and over his shouler and helped him limp-stumble back to the room, where he knelt again and arranged Lucio like a limp, overlarge doll on the mattress.  
He was gone into the other room a minute before coming back and unceremoniously bundling Lucio under a stack of three more surplus blankets, all gray and smelling of hot dust.  
“Wh-why are you helping me?”  
Reaper paused, one hand very near Lucio’s knee. He sighed, and shook his head.  
“Because I don’t piss where I drink, and I’m not stupid. You’d be more dangerous under Vishkar’s thumb than you would be running around with those idiots at Overwatch.”  
“I don’t have m-my amp,” Lucio pointed out, “Or-or anything to help you…”  
“Be quiet,” Reaper said. His voice was tired, almost gentle. Then, “I don’t need it right now, anyway.”  
“I’m trying,” Lucio mumbled, fighting down shivers. He pulled one of the blankets around his shoulders like a cape, which helped, but didn’t completely stop the cold feeling.  
Reaper watched him the entire time, impassive, before making a frustrated noise.  
“Come here,” he said.  
“What are you doing?!” Lucio said. He didn’t have time to pull away before the other man ws folding him up in a one-armed hug, one massive arm descending behind his back.  
He had taken off the gauntlets and even the gloves; Lucio could feel his hand, large and blunt and warm, against his back. He relaxed into the touch--the delicious, perfect warmth--until his shoulder was tucked up into the taller man’s armpit and the man’s whole arm was draped over his back, his huge bicep flexing against Lucio’s side and his hand moving between Lucio’s shoulderblades.  
“You aren’t cold like yuo usually are,” Lucio muttered, after a moment.  
Reaper paused. “That’s because I got a charge,” he said.  
Lucio had to crane his neck around to look up at the taller man from that angle, and he asked, “You found something in there that healed you?”  
Reaper sighed again. “Not exactly. You should talk less. You might bite your tongue or the inside of your mouth, and goodness knows famous musicians don’t have time to stop talking to let mouth stitches heal.”  
Lucio managed a shaky chuckle, at that. He nodded, but only manged to nod once, because he was shivering pretty badly by that point, and also because his head felt too big and too heavy.  
He let his head loll against Reaper’s shouler, telling himself that things already couldn’t get weirder, and he already felt like dogshit and wanted to feel better as fast as possible. Reaper rubbing his back was definitely helping.  
After a moment, Reaper murmured, “They ripped out one of your locs, on top of your head. You have a segment of hair that’s only a few inches inches long left behind.”  
Lucio made an affirmative noise. “Don’t worry about m-me too much…they’re f-faux locs,” he said.  
Reaper grunted. “I’m worried a lot less about you and a lot more about them taking your hair and feeding your DNA into a database and using it to track your family down. You’re no use to me if you’re a wreck because your grandmother’s house mysteriously burned to the ground.” Then, “Still, that’s at least a good tactical decision, one I know no one in Overwatch came up with.”  
“Huh,” Lucio said, and fell silent. He tried to fight down the smile that came to his face, nd failed. The locs were more of a fashion choice than anything, really; he liked being able to change his hair color on a whim.  
Suddenly he remembered what he’d seen on those surveillance tapes--the dead cops, sucked dry; the story of all the bloodless corpses, the dried husks of bodies left behind.  
He felt a little cold, and then a little, evil jolt of vindictive glee shot in his belly: they’d probably been Vishkar security, and those guys were a special kind of evil, anyway.  
This thought was immediately tempered by the thought that they’d probably just been low-level guys, possibly making minimum wage or only slightly better. Not all a corporation’s employees would be die-hard and loyal for them, he knew.  
He didn’t want to ask Reaper if he ever bothered to differentiate.

“You really DO deserve better than those idiots,” Reaper said.  
“What are you gonna do, offer me a seat at the Talon table? No thanks.”  
Reaper was silent for a long moment, before a rough sigh rattled loose from behin his mask. He shook his head. “No. I’m trying to warn you.”  
Lucio rolled his eyes. 

 

**Except Symmetra kind of…let them out…and she did Something, idk what yet, so she could track him down, but of ocurse because Reaper is very thorough, he finds and destroys her tracker, so Symmetra finds the hideout Reaper took him to empty. Then she has to do some legwork to track Lucio down. Morrison tries to be all snarly but then Symmetra shows up and she has More Questions, and this time she is willing to barter information of her own to get answers.  
Of course, she only wants to speak to the more scientifically-inclined team members, and wants nothing to do with Jack. So she only wants to talk to Winston and Lucio, basically, lol…**

"I can't stand her! She's stuck-up and pretentious and likes to act like her shit doesn't stink, and--"  
McCree let Lucio finish his own tirade, which Lucio ended with his hands clutching in the air in abject frustration.  
"Why do *I* gotta be the one to show her around?"  
"Because she defected from Vishkar and she prob'ly has some really important intel she could share with us, if only we can keep civil tongues in our heads long enough for her to share it. That means for longer'n an hour at a time," McCree said.  
Lucio sighed heavily. "Civil. Huh. Lemme tell you something--I've been nothing BUT civil! But she--she's just IMPOSSIBLE! There' no way to get along with someone THAT stuck on themselves. Uh-uh. HANZO can show her around or babysit her or whatever. Hell, why can't Lena go with her? Or literally ANYBODY but me?" Lucio asked.  
McCree shrugged, but smirked a little. "Her and Hanzo? You know you don't want two type-A personaities like that going together. You'd come back and all that'd be left of the safehouse would be a smokin' crater. And as for Winston, I'm sure he'n'her would love to talk shop about science and whatnot, but uh, he's a talkin' gorilla. Not exactly the kind of fella who can just walk down a street and blend in, if you follow me."

~

"How tacky," she said, her normally-impassive face pinched into a sneer.  
Lucio looked around, genuinely confused about what she thought was so bad.  
Then he saw the people who were washing their laundry in a big zinc tub in the yard. The woman was maybe twenty, he figured, but her careworn, roughened hands looked twice that; every now and then she'd brush her black hair back off her forehead. There were three chilren in the yard with her, but not even the toddler was playing: they were all busily folding laundry, the eldest girl taking it down off a line strung between the two trees.  
The youngest child looked maybe four. She was helping the eldest girl carry armfuls of cleaned clothing back up the crooked, cracked concrete steps, back into the house.  
"Well, people gotta wash their clothes," Lucio said. "And we aren't all rich enough to have built-in washer-and-dryer combo units, or those fancy new steam washers that cook the dirt off your clothes. Some of us are so poor we have to actually get our hands dirty."  
She looked at him, her face going blank again.  
"I simply meant--"  
"Yeah, yeah, I get it, poor people are disgusting animals and you really wish you could just round us all up and put us in pens to keep us from dirtying up your precious designer communities and the cities you ‘reclaimed’ by gentrifying them."  
Interrupted that way, she stopped mid-sentence, her mouth still slightly open. Her eyes flashed quickly; she glanced away, then back at his face, an then away again, seeming to telegraph annoyance even as she faked embarrassment.  
Lucio couldn't take it anymore. He laughed aloud, scornful, an continued, "Not like you've ever even had to think about that, huh? I bet when you were that little kid's age, your mom and dad were jockeying to get you into, like, some fancy Montessori preschool or some boarding school where they started teaching you accounting by the time you were ten years old."  
Her whole face clouded up, then, a frown cresing her perfect brow.  
"Do not speak of things that you have no understanding of," she said. Her voice was icy, even as she turned ane began to stride away.  
Lucio couldn't let it go, though. Not that easily.  
He kept pace with her, just to one side, still talking.  
"What, it doesn't feel good to have someone tell you the truth? It doesn't feel good to have someone remind you that while you were strutting around in Chanel Mary Janes and a bunnyfur jacket that cost as much as a fucking CAR, there were OTHER PEOPLE who had to bust their asses just to EAT? Just so their KIDS could eat?"  
"I do not have to talk with you about this," she said. "I do not have to talk with you about this!"  
Her voice was thick.  
"Oh, you don't, huh? Is it 'cause I'm too stupid to understand what you're saying? You think all your fancy concepts will go over my head? Huh? How about we try the conversation in Portuguese? Or maybe Japanese? I'm fluent in both!" He snapped.  
She touched the side of her head, shaking it as if annoyed, and he stopped suddenly, his anger too much to sustain.  
"Yeah, and maybe my parents COULDN'T afford to send me to a school that offered accounting classes and shit. But at least they taught me BASIC MANNERS!" he called after her.

She stopped suddenly, at that, her heels grinding to a precise halt on the loose scree on the road. Her shoulders shuddered, her hands coming up in front of herself.  
Then, before Lucio could say anything else, she rounded on him and came striding back closer.  
Her face was a thundercloud, her eyes streaming.  
"DO NOT TALK ABOUT PARENTS! DO NOT TALK ABOUT *MY* PARENTS! DO NOT TALK TO *ME* AS IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT PARENTAL SACRIFICE! HOW DARE YOU! YOU!"  
He saw the slap coming well enough to catch her hand, and they grappled for a moment as she tried to strike him again, then began muttering under her breath as 

 

She took another sip of the drink, still not meeting his eyes.  
"They sent me to a school in the city. My parents...there was a flood. We lost everything. The fields were ruined, the crops destroyed. A famine was imminent. My parents paid a couple--their friends--who were going to the city, to take me. They gave them all the money they had, to take me someplace where I would at least have the opportunity to find food.  
"I barely remember them, or whether they were supposed to care for me for a long term or only to find me a permanent home. But they did not. They took me to an orphanage. The woman--the wife--she stroked my hair and said it was such a pity I had been so cursed. That is all I remember of her. She was wearing a faded plum-colored sari. When she spoke, I could see one of her front teeth was greenish. Her husband was tall with a large nose. He was wearing a blue shirt and he would not look at me, as if looking at me would soliify his guilt. I never saw them again.  
"I never saw my parents again. For years, I waited. I was convinced my mother an father were going to come in through the front doors one day, or come up to the courtyard gate and tell me to go inside and fetch my things, because they were taking me home.”  
She sighed, long and slow, and her eyes overflowed again before she dabbed the tears away wth the handkerchief.  
“This never happened, of course.” She paused, her mouth a hard crease that turned into a watery, wavering line, and when she spoke next her voice was thick and almost choked. “I found out later that the famine was much worse than even expected. Whole villages succumbed. I never heard from anyone in my family ever again.”  
The suden weight of the thought hit Lucio in the gut, hard--the fact that, at some point, she must have realized her parents had scraped togehter all the money they had in the world to try to buy her a better life, knowing that doing so would literally be sealing their own fates.  
He didn’t want to ask about the other couple, whoever they’d been, because clearly from what she’d said, they’d taken the money and run. Probably, he thought grimly, because they knew her parents wouldn’t live to know the difference. 

Lucio stared, aghast. Finally he managed to whisper, "How old were you?"  
She looked at him, then, very carefully. Her eyes were red, and without her glasses in the way, her eyes were very large, her eyelashes very long and straight, the lashed clumped and defined like paintbrush tips.  
"When my parents sent me away, I was twelve. When the Vishkar scouts found me, I was fourteen."

**insert vague story aboit ‘school’ run by Vishkar that basically is a threshing mill searching for new raw talent. They go find random orphans with high enough test scores, promise them “better lives”, then put them in the school to see who does well andwho doesn’t. anyone who does poorly is sent back to the orphanages. They consider this “outreach”, despite literally discarding any student/child they deem not useful, and they don’t actually donate any money to the orphanages themselves, beyond the lump ‘placement fee’ they pay the orphanages (…they literally buy children) at the outset. Of course, a decent hard-light builder can more than make back what the company pid for them, and this is wht they are counting on: even by the time they are old enough to be considered legal adults, they will have done enough work to pay themselves off, and then fter that Vishkar only kind of cares what happens to them after that. The children are assets. Most of them do not make it into the ‘permanent’ job programs they are promised, so they don’t get the “better lives” they were promised. Symmetra is in denial about this. Somewhere along the line someoen told her that the kids who flunked out of the program were adopted into loving homes with families, not just…tossed out onto the street, which is what Vishkar is actually doing. It never occurs to her to look deeper into what happens to her classmates, because she very quickly ends up a Favorite, which means she starts getting special privileges REALLY FAST. Like. She has a town-home in Utopaea, and she helped to design a lot of that city. She is very proud of this, because it’s a “model city of the future” with green walls and roof gardens and full water usage and multiple sources of electricity and no use of fossil fuels and blah blah blah it’s just all consumerist pretend faux-green rich people wankery that’s too expensive for the average person to even afford to stay overnight in. She doesn’t even know how much anything costs because, since she works for Vishkar, all her expenses go to a special employee spending account. I need to cut all of this and put it in a Symmetra headcanon note. Hmm. It’s fter 3 in the morning oh my crease**

“I remember my mother was a weaver. She tried to teach me but she was too severe for me, or I was too young to appreciate such strictness. I would cry and run away and hide in my father’s work-shed. When he was not tending the fields, he was a carpenter. Once he gave me a perfect spiral of wood-shaving and I thought it was so beautiful I took it to show my mother. I asked her if I could have it made into a necklace and she laughed at me and called me a silly girl,” Symmetra said, shaking her head. “But I loved to watch her and my aunts work, all at their looms. I would crawl beneath, where no one could see me, and watch the machinery as it worked. It was all hand-made, all wood and cloth, you understand. Natural materials, when rendered correctly and with proper skill, are never primitive materials to work with. It is their very nature and simplicity that hard-light seeks to emulate, in function if not in appearance.”  
Her words took Lucio by surprise; he expected her to be a big proponent of all-modern everything made of synthetic materials. 

~

The next time they fell asleep together--or, well, Lucio fell asleep in front of Reaper again--wan’t planned, either, but it wasn’t exactly accidental.

(the team gets back from a mission that was part-stake-out, part-fight, and Lucio is EXHAUSTED. He goes to bed as soon as he gets back ot base, and when he wakes up, Reaper is sitting in his room. He turns the amp on but hes so tired he can’t keep his eyes open, so he nods off. He wakes up when he feels someone holding his hand and it’s Reaper, being weirdly soppy and affectionate. Lucio nods off again, and when he wake a third time he convinces himself that Reaper must have been a dream or something. Then he rolls over in bed and Reaper is STILL THERE.)

Lucio blinked at him, then blinked some more, his bleary eyes readjusting to the dawn light.  
Reaper was still sitting there in his desk chair, his elbows braced on his knees and his hands folded, slack, between them. The mask was inscrutable as always but Lucio knew the sensation of being watched.  
“Did you…did you really just camp out here all night?”  
“I’ve stayed the night in worse lodgings,” Reaper said, casually. He leaned back and stretched his arms slightly, and Lucio noticed he’d actually taken off his coat, and was wearing only the black turtleneck he had on underneath. It was rolled up and off his strong forearms, the skin mottled brown and gray.  
He glanced down at the amp and saw it was at a 0% charge; its effects must have stopped helping long ago, and he wondered when it had died and why Reaper had chosen to stay.  
“No, seriously,” Lucio said, sitting up. His whole body was no longer a single solid ache, but his head felt light and airy as he sat up, his vision see-sawing back and forth before righting itself.  
“Your entire team, barring those who have watch duty, are all sound asleep in their bunks. Relax. I didn’t come here to suck the life out of anyone.”  
Now it was Lucio’s turn to stretch his arms. He groaned a little, then said, “Except me.”  
Reaper cocked his head slightly, then surprised him by chuckling. “Especially not you.”  
Lucio didn’t know how to respond to that, to the odd gentleness of his voice; so instead, he murmnured, “Why DID you decide to stay?”  
Reaper was silent for a long, long moment. Then he sighed, long and low, and sat back in the chair. “I know you think you’ve been careful, but you really have no idea how much danger you’re in. I would suggest you get a room that doesnt’ have a window, but then, that would cause a fair amount of difficulty for both of us, and I doubt it would keep you safe.”  
Lucio felt cold all over, suddenly.  
“What kind of danger?”  
“The Vishkar higher-ups are…not happy that you escaped. Right now they’re trying to spin some convoluted nonsense about you being a Talon mole that we planted and who they caught and had to imprison, because of course it would look ridiculous on an international level if they’d actually beaten and imprisoned an international music star and human rights activist,” Reaper said.  
“They beat me worse the first time,” Lucio said softly. “And that time, I wasn’t the only one.”  
“But there were no cameras following you, then. No thousands of eager fans trawling the internet desperate for candid shots of you, of any shitty blurry paparazzi shot of you in casual clothes they could find. Can you imagine what a disaster it would be, for them, if anything happened ot yuo and someone managed to connect them to it?”

~

**at this point they should be more affectionate and less snippy. Close friends with benefits who can’t Be Together Seriously because their jobs pull them apart too much, and they both know it.**

There was a faint scratching on the glass, almost like a tree branch scraping--then the soft scrape of the window moving in its frame.  
Lucio sat bolt upright.  
There were no tree branches anywhere near his window.  
And he watched, pressing himself as far back into the mattress as he could, as the black mist seeped through the window, sifting on the air like dust motes on a breeze.  
Lucio watched him re-solidify his body, rising from a crouch on the rug. It was like something out of a movie--but unfortunately he couldn’t cover his eyes and look away, or yell at the protagonist to run.  
He sat up in bed, kicking the sheets aside to free his legs.  
Reaper stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at him, silent.  
After a beat, Lucio muttered, “What now? You want another charge?”  
Reaper nodded once. His movements were jerky and stiff.  
Lucio weighed his options.  
There was the surety that Athena’s security systems were NOT catching this--whatever it was he was doing, it was like he didn’t even register. And he knew that both Morrison and Hanzo patrolled the hallways and rooftops, respectively, so THEY should have seen SOMETHING.  
Finally, since Reaper didn’t move or speak, Lucio sighed.  
“All right. Sit there,” he said, pointing at his computer chair.  
He noticed the man looked...stiff. HE walked slowly to the computer chair, sat down slowly, grunting softly as he did.  
Once, when he was a little kid, he’d joined a protest for better electric infrastructure in his neighborhood. It was a peaceful protest, mostly children and old people and women carrying signs and shouting chants together, walking hand-in-hand under their banners. They’d wanted to have the lights turned back on.  
When the police attacked, Lucio saw in the crowds, an old woman with two broken arms walking like that: held crossed in front of her body, her back slightly hunched. He didn’t know why the gesture made him feel ten times more tense and worried than if Reaper had been acting normally.  
Keeping his eyes on Reaper, he slid the amp out from under his bed, unclipped the case. While he was pulling the gloves on, Reaper leaned forward slightly, bracing his elbows on his knees. He exhaled hard--the loudest noise he’d made that night--and Lucio rose to sit back on the bed, glove one one hand and amp held in the other.  
“Don’t move,” Lucio said.  
Reaper didn’t, except in ways that counted.  
After the first few seconds he was taking deep, smooth breaths, his shoulders sagging. After awhile longer, he put his hands on the mask, his breath rasping softly behind it.  
“Hey,” Lucio said, against his better judgement. He’d waited even longer before speaking; he didn’t want to be the first one to fold, in this weird game they were playing. Still...  
“Hey, are you all right?”  
For a long, long moment, Reaper didn’t move. Then finally he shook his head, only once.  
Then, after an even LONGER moment, Reaper turned his head to him, his head lolling on his neck like a broken doll’s.  
Lucio gasped slightly.  
Reaper whispered, “Tell me something.”  
Lucio licked his dry lips. “Yeah? What?”  
“About where you grew up.” Reaper said.  
When he did not elaborate farther, Lucio sighed a little. He glanced at the door--only once--and then said, “Really?”  
“Yes,” Reaper drawled, “Really. Humor me.”  
Lucio hesitated, his breathing shallowing out. What was the point of this? What did he WANT?  
“You know, this is...kinda weird, as far as interrogation techniques go,” Lucio ventured, instead.  
Reaper made a single cough of laughter that subsided into a groan afterwards. “Interrogation,” Reaper said, “Is something you do to extract intelligence from marks. If I were interrrogating you, you would definitely know.”  
Lucio frowned, at that, thumbing the amp all the way down to nothing but a trickle.  
Reaper made a noise that was a groan that rose into a bitten-off scream, presumably as the healing effect was abruptly scaled back.  
“I know a veiled threat when I hear one, though,” Lucio said. He kept his voice firm and level, and kept his finger light on the amp’s trigger.  
Reaper was doing...SOMETHING. The wicked claws of the gauntlets were biting into the soft material of the hood, his hands clenched tight over the crown of his head.  
Lucio felt terrible for a few seconds, watching the other man clutch his head like he wished he could crush it. Part of him wondered if this was just a trick to get him to turn it back up; part of him sincerely felt bad, because Reaper was literally clawing his own scalp in pain--or a very believable pantomime of it.  
When he turned it back up, Reaper relaxed again, all the breath going out of him at once. After a moment he chuckled. The sound was like rocks falling onto sheet metal.  
“Interrogation,” he sighed, and shook his head. “You’d make a decent questioner, I can tell already. You know just when to give and just when to take.”  
“Evidently not, since you won’t tell me anything I ask.”  
Reaper muttered something unintelligible.  
“What do you want from me?” Lucio demanded.  
“I want you to tell me about where you grew up,” Reaper said again.  
Lucio sighed.  
After hedging for another minute, he got an idea.  
“I will if you tell me who you are.”  
Reaper snorted. “Come on. You can do better than that.”  
Lucio bit his lip, scowling. “I could turn it down again. Want me to do that?”  
Reaper chuckled. “There. Now you’re getting the hang of it. Threaten to break my fingers with an office stapler next, and we’re halfway to having you trained into a real enforcer.”  
Lucio’s hand holding the amp trembled, but he sighed, gritted his teeth, and...didn’t change the setting at all.  
“Or not,” Reaper said. “Still soft, huh?”  
“I don’t hurt people for a living,” Lucio said, his voice going hard.  
“Ohhh, that’s right,” Reaper crooned, his voice like shattered silk. “Of course not. You’re a HERO.”  
Lucio scowled in annoyance; Reaper continued, “You never answered my question.”  
Lucio had to stop and think what that was; finally, he said, “Why don’t you tell me where you grew up, first?”  
Reaper coughed, repeated the noise twice. The third time he did it, Lucio realized he was laughing.  
Then Reaper started talking, very quietly, and told Lucio about the stucco walls of the apartments where he lived; the houses with orange tile rooftops; the mountains in the distance; how the sky was only blue for part of the year, when it was so windy it would rip trees out of the ground. He told him about the grafiti and the murals of La Virgen, her eyes downcast and her hands outstretched, and how no one dared to deface them, either out of fear for their souls or fear that their abuelas would find out and come after them. He told him about the sad, draggled palm trees the white real estate developers had planted everywhere, even though they gave neither shade nor fruit and served only to harbor rats and pigeons (which the rich people then blamed on the poor people), the hot dumpster smell intermingled with the smell of something, somewhere, frying up in its own delicious oils. The cemented-caged river where the street racers went sometimes, and where, the rest of the time, skater punks and bike kids hung out. The soul food restaurant on the corner that sold fried catfish good enough to save your recyling money for. The roses, all colors, cultivated anxiously in beautiful terra-cotta pots, arranged in rows in tiny front yards. The abuelas standing there watering them in the early afternoons, just to wave to the neighbors or keep an eye out for wayward grandkids trying to ditch school. He told him about the fights at night, the battles between the cops and the gangs. He told him how, the first time he went to the beach, he was amazed at how much the ocean sounded like the sigh of cars going under an overpass.  
Lucio didn’t say anything. The man spoke in a flat, low monotone, his voice broken now and again to stop adn take a few breaths.  
Lucio was good at taking hints, and thumbed the amp’s healing effect up higher, but this didn’t prompt Reaper to speak faster or louder. He dropped his hands, after a moment, though, with a sigh.  
When he fell silent, Lucio shifted where he sat, and waited.  
Reaper didn’t move, besides to take a few deep breaths, now much quieter than before.  
Half-hoping someone would come in and cach him and half terrified that that would happen, Lucio started talking.  
He told him about the buildings, the old quarter where everything was so beautiful, the new swimming into the old as people repainted the buildings brilliant colors or changed the roofs; about the dirt in the streets and the gutters eternally full of the sickly-sweet smell of rotten fruit and the skunky odor of spilt soda. He told him about street hockey games played on the paved tennis courts of fancy old hotels the people had converted into apartment complexes after the white developers abandoned them, and soccer games played in the market square whenever some vendors didn’t show up. Parrots in horseshoe-shaped roosts, their legs tied with red silk cord with tassels and bells. Smiling old aunties selling candy they carried in baskets on their heads, just like in old pictures. They all had at least one gold tooth. The tourists always paid five times as much as locals and seemed to think it was a bargain anyway. The first time he saw the ocean up close he didn’t know what to do or think or feel; he just stood there with his mouth open until his mother had called him.  
They sat in silence for awhile together. Then finally Lucio asked, “Why did you ask me that?”  
At that, Reaper stood suddenly, flexing his arms again.  
“A distraction,” he said.  
Lucio’s eyes widened. He scrambled to his feet beside the bed, now awkward because of the added proximity to the other man. His hand was sweaty on the amp’s handle. “What?”  
Reaper turned his head towards him and chuckled.  
Before Lucio had time to process anything, Reaper was in front of him, patting him on the shoulder with a gentleness so unexpected it made Lucio wobble on his feet.  
“Don’t worry. It wasn’t for you.” he said.  
As if that made anything clearer; but of course, before Lucio could ask EXACTLY what he meant, he’d dematerialized and was gone again, the night air colder in his wake.  
Lucio left the window open, this time, to counter the smell. He also slept with his amp on, beside his pillow, one hand touching it all night.

~

“Still so innocent and naive. You know that? That you think you can save some people without killing others. That’s not how the hero game works, nino.”  
“Don’t fucking call me ‘boy’,” Lucio snapped, “In ANY language.”  
Reaper was silent, seeming actually shocked. Then he chuckled, low and throaty as a puma purring. Then, “It’s good to see you still have enough pride to defend yourself.”  
“Uh-uh, don’t try that negging shit with me,” Lucio said.  
“I hope you defend yourself from your superiors as well as you do from your enemies.” Reaper said, continuing exactly as if Lucio hadn’t spoken at all.  
Then there he was, a blood-reeking cloud as hot as a breath in his face--and he was gone.  
Lucio had no idea what he meant. He fiddled with his amp some more, put on some soothing low-frequency bass noise that made his bones buzz pleasantly, and then laid down and willed himself to sleep.

~

 

The next morning they ran a mission through a burnt-out Talon hideout, 

“Man, whose side are you ON, anyway?” Lucio asked.  
“My own,” Reaper said. 

~

“Man, you can’t keep sneaking in here like this,” Lucio said.  
He didn’t protest, though, when Reaper went and checked the door’s lock, before gliding back over to the side of the bed. Lucio heard soft muffled sounds of a pair of boots falling to the carpeted floor: then the fabric rustle of a pair of pants, a coat.  
His pulse picked up at the exact instant when the other man twitched aside the sheets, bellying cool air in from the outside along with his own body. For a moment he was moving behind him, live and lithe as a tiger or a huge eel--then he was still.  
Lucio hadn’t known what to expect, so he flinched a little when rReaper’s hand touched his arm--not ice-cold, but room-temperature. Lukewarm.  
He wondered, if he wrapped his hand around the man’s big wrist, if he’d find a pulse. If there WAS one there to find. He wasn’t 100% sure of the logistics of the other man’s condition. 

~

“I know what you did,” Gabriel said, smugly, into his ear. Very unceremoniously he slipped his arm around, grabbed one of Lucio’s thighs, pinching slightly at the softer skin in between.  
Lucio swatted at his hand but otherwise didn’t try to escape. Gabriel bit his ear, but Lucio knew he was covering his teeth with his lips and it was more for show than anything else.  
He had no idea what they were doing. He suspected the older man didn’t, either.  
He didn’t say any of this aloud.  
Instead he sighed as if annoyed, bunched his pillow up under his cheek some more.  
“Oh, yeah? What’s that? And if you’re gonna try to say you found my criminal record, congratulations, but sorry to rain on your parade. It’s kind of a public record at this point. World-fame as a musician tends to do that. Being a poor street kid does that first. What are you gonna do, tell everyone about the time I stole some candy ‘cause it was my birthday and my mom couldn’t afford to buy me any?”  
Gabriel, to his immense surprise, laughs. The sound was deeper and chestier than he expected, and the vibrations spread warm through his ribcage.  
This was ridiculous, he thought. Here he was playing little spoon to the man they were all hunting like a pack of dogs.  
“No one gives a fuck if a poor kid steals to eat. Or, they shouldn’t. But that’s not what I meant, and you know it,” he said.  
Lucio was mentally scrambling for witty, cutting things to say, when really he really, really just wanted to shift a little to the side so Reaper’s hand would be just a LITTLE higher and the man would be fondling his balls and not his leg.  
“Then what DID you mean?” he asked.  
“I mean those Vishkar bastards whose insides you liquefied, the first time you used your amp,” Reaper said.  
Lucio’s stomach was suddenly a cold leaden ball inside him. Without thinking he elbowed his way away from the other man, sat up abruptly. The only thing stopping him from slapping the lamp and turning the light on was the sure knowledge that Reaper had at LEAST one knife on him.  
In the light-barred darkness, his face from the nose up was indistinct: Lucio saw high cheekbones, rounded features, a black beard on his chin and a black moustache bristling over his lip. He had a black beard (actually goatee, but that’s a really unsexy word. Why :( ). The only part of his face Lucio could clearly see was his chin from the lips down, his mouth set in a frown.  
“What do you want?” Lucio said. He surprised himself by sounding terrified; he thought he’d made peace with that a long time ago.  
He expected Reaper to laugh at him again, to make some seedy offer.  
The other man was silent, shifting slightly in the bed. After a moment he sat up, as well, and they were both staring at each other, a pair of silhouettes in the blue-gray-slashed darkness.  
“What, let me guess--blackmail? You’ll expose me if I don’t agree to do whatever you want?”  
Cold pinpricks of nervous sweat were starting all over his body. He felt sick.  
Reaper said nothing. And if he was shaking his head as his body evaporated into blood-and-carrion-reeking mist, Lucio tried not to think of it.

He performed terribly on their next training session, badly enough that McCree pulled him aside for a pep talk that mostly consisted of him thumping him on the back and saying that maybe he needed to take it easy and, you know, SLEEP, instead of staying up all night to make music.  
Lucio felt slightly relieved that McCree didn’t suspect what was really going on.  
He wasn’t sure if anyone else knew--or if they did, what they were planning to do about it. 

“You know,” Lucio said, “That i DO still know how to use this to...what’d you say? Oh, yeah. ‘Liquefy people’s insides’.”  
Reaper stood very, very still.  
“In case you get any ideas,” Lucio added. “Matter of fact, since it works with vibrations and I ain’t never tested it on liquids or gases, i’m not even sure what would happen if i used this while you were in sentient blood mist form. I don’t want to find out. Do YOU?”

 

The next time he came, he was already sitting down on the bed before Lucio was even properly awake.  
He groaned, rolled over, and mashed his face into the mattress.  
“What.”  
“Is that any way to treat a houseguest?”  
“You’re not a GUEST, you--I don’t even know WHAT you are to me, man! What do you WANT?”  
“How did you feel, Lucio? How did it make you feel?”  
Maybe he got off on this, Lucio thought. Maybe he got off on just getting into bed with people and then making them relive their worst mistakes.  
He’d heard of weirder things. A friend of his was a rentboy who got picked up by this rich white American lady. Her favorite thing in the world was to fuck while wearing all the fancy shit her white American husband had bought for her--fur coats, diamond rings, pearl necklaces--while explaining, very calmly, that he never touched her, and wasn’t it ironic that some street boy from Brazil could fuck better than a man who owned a yacht and mansions in three states?  
Still, they hadn’t even DONE anything. Unless this was really all Reaper wanted.  
And Lucio was fairly certain it wasn’t.  
He didn’t say anything.  
Reaper bit his ear--for real, this time, sinking teeth into the cartilage, and Lucio twisted away with a howl of pain he bit off when Reaper’s thick hand clamped down around his mouth.  
“Shhh,” Reaper hissed.  
Lucio bit his hand.  
“What the fuck do you WANT, huh? Tell me! I’m not gonna sell the team out, I’m not gonna--”  
“Who said anything about your teammates?” 

~

“That’s what happens,” the other man said. “That’s how it goes. You do the work and they give someone ELSE the credit. someone more ‘kid friendly’, more ‘photogenic’, who they can use to sell fucking action figures and send on fluff tours with corps of photographers while YOU bust your ass and almost die on a monthly basis.”

~

The next time, Lucio was waiting for him.  
He was sitting in the room’s small bathroom, on the white-capped chrome stool, putting his hair up before he went to bed.  
Reaper came in through the window, three big sinuous bellows of blackness that looked like a cloud of smoke blown in by the wind. Then he was there, in the doorway.  
“I read your file,” Lucio said, without preamble.  
He dipped two fingers into the hair grease, rubbed them together with his thumb to warm it until his fingertips were coated in a bergamot-scented oily film. Then he slipped the fingers under his locs, up under the back curve of his skull, massaging the pomade in at the roots of his hair.  
Reaper, who had started and frozen in place when he saw the mirror Lucio was sitting in front of, glided closer, still silent.  
“And which file would THAT be?” he asked, after a long moment.  
Lucio didn’t look up at him. He dipped his fingertps back in the tin of pomade, smoothed them together again, rubbed the scalp just behind his left ear.  
The third time he reached his hand out, Reaper’s gauntleted fist closed aorund his wrist, squeezing with a gentle pressure that was just enough to stop him from moving his hand.  
“What file, hmm?”  
“If you’re who I think you are,” Lucio ventured.  
The hand on his wrist remained gentle.  
He continued, “You didn’t deserve what happened to you. But you don’t have to do this, either.”  
He expected a sarcastic laugh. He wondered if Reaper would dematerialize himself into blood-mist and leave, jeering as he went.  
Instead, he got a sigh. A deep, bone-tired sigh.  
Then the taller man was sinking down to sit on the rim of the shower-tub.  
He smelled like broken tree branches, grass, wet asphalt. Lucio had no idea how he’d approached the base.  
The other man pulled one of the shotgun shells off the clip he wore across his chest and flicked it at the wall; Lucio jumped a lttle when it hit the light-switch and the whole bathroom was suddenly dark, but for the square of blue-white light coming in from the streetlamp outside.  
Then the sounds he was used to: thump of boots, the belt, the softer fabric sounds of a shirt being discarded.  
He sighed, figured he might as well keep getting ready for bed in the dark, since it was abundantly clear that Reaper didn’t want the lights on. Maybe he’d just stay in the bathroom and be sad in there by himself. Maybe he’d creep back into bed with him and aggressively cuddle him until they both fell asleep--or, well, until Lucio gave up panicking and finally just gave up on remaining conscious--and he’d be gone in the morning, as usual.  
Reaper’s naked hand closed around his wrist again, much gentler this time, his thumb stroking the soft, thinner skin on the underside of Lucio’s wrist.  
Not for the first time, he wondered why the man was doing this. Was this some sideways method of interrogation? Did he hope to wheedle OVerwatch’s secrets out of Lucio by being the world’s most awkward, abrasive, semi-platonic bedfellow?  
“What?” he asked. He kept his voice soft.  
“Come here,” Reaper said.  
Lucio allowed himself to be drawn to the side, his hand pulled forward and down and--  
Onto the crown of the other man’s head. He was a little surprised, but only a little: in every picture he’d seen of him before the accident, he’d been wearing some kind of head covering, a beanie, usually. His hair was close-cropped, but Lucio could feel he’d probably have a medium curl pattern, if it was allowed to grow out; and he spread his fingers cautiously, his thumb grazing the crown of the other man’s forehead, his eyebrows, smoothing back over his head and feeling raised ridges of scar tissue where some colossal wound had split his scalp--his SKULL--like a dropped melon.  
“What do you want me to...” he started. Then he fell silent for a moment.  
“You can’t sit on the edge of the tub. It’s not...it’s not comfortable. Sit on the toilet.”  
Reaper made a disgusted noise.  
“The lid’s closed, man, and you sure ain’t gonna catch nothin’!”  
And that was how he ended up standing in front of the other man, massaging his good pomade into the other’s scarred scalp, while Reaper sat on the closed toilet with his head bowed and his elbows on his knees.  
For a long time neither of them spoke; Lucio, after awhile, got a rhythm going and without thinking hummed a few bars of a song, soft and faraway-sounding.  
He stopped when Reaper stiffened in front of him.  
When the other man didn’t either jump up, turn into blood-mist and leave via a vent, or stick a knife in his belly, he relaxed a little.  
“I used to do this for my boyfriend,” Lucio blurted, without thinking, after a few minutes.  
Reaper only grunted. “Used to?”

“We both know that if you wanted me to leave, you wouldn’t sleep with your sonic amp on,” Gabriel says, perfectly matter-of-fact. He squeezes the handful of thigh he has, almost asently, and then starts kneagind again.  
He had really big hands.  
Lucio’s mouth was watering.  
“You can’t take my amp,” he mumbled, but it was a token remark.  
He found himself hoping Gabriel realized that, too.  
And Gabriel LAUGHED a littlel, one huge arm like a python curling behind his back to pull him closer. He gasped aloud when the other man palmed a handful of his ass, his fingers sinking in just enough to edge towards pain. Lucio stretched out both legs until the muscles down the fronts of his legs burned slightly in protest, arching towards the other man’s body, solid and hot in the dark. Gabriel loosened his grip and stroked his legs instead, hand moving from the curve just under his butt an down his thighs and back up again.  
When Gabriel kissed his cheek, his breath smelled like blood and smoke, the aftermath of a terrible battle or accident. Arousal was singing bright as panic in Lucios’ system, the two warring for immediacy.  
“You’re so compact,” Gabriel said, just above his ear. He started doing this really distracting thing with his fingers, ‘walking’ them up and down Lucio’s asscrack while squeezing the handful he had in between passes.  
“Can I touch you too, or will you shank me?” Lucio asked. He was only half-joking.  
(A guy can only be surrounded by other hot, unapproachable men on a daily basis for so long, he told himself. And also: I’m probably dreaming. Might as well get some.)  
“If I don’t like it, you’ll know,” Gabriel said.  
“That’s not funny,” Lucio said.  
Then suddenly the older man’s hand was around his wrist, guiding his hand up, and up: skating palm-down over a muscled chest, his fingertips shivering over long bars of raised scar tissue, past a nipple cool and soft as a single rose petal, until the tips of Lucio’s fingers were on his lips, the side of his face where two ridges were carved from the skin.  
He took the hint and leaned in for a kiss--  
And got a cheekful instead, when the other man turned his head.  
Lucio made a frustrated noise; Gabriel huffed a little, then muttered, “You don’t want to taste the inside of my mouth.”  
Lucio hesitated a moment, considered cheekily offering him a spare toothbrush. Then he remembered the way the other man’s breath smelled, and thought the better of it. “What, you don’t think I’m a gentleman? Like I’d try to slip you some tongue on the first date?”

“I want your legs around me while I’m inside you,” Gabriel said.  
Lucio was already hard and wet in his loose sleep shorts, the elastic cutting into the insice of one of his legs where rolling around had made them shift.  
“I don’t have any condoms,” he mumbled into the other man’s cheek.  
“We’ll manage,” Gabriel said. Then, “I’m surprised a jet-setting world-famous musician like you hasn’t had his shots...”  
Lucio raised himself up on his elbows, frowning down through the darkness at Gabriel’s amused face.  
“What do you mean, ‘we’ll manage’? Seriously, I don’t have condoms, and no, I haven’t got any shots, and--”  
“I MEAN,” Gabriel said, “I’m not going to put my dick in your ass, and you aren’t going to put yours in mine. Relax.”  
“You just said--”  
“I have two hands that work just fine,” Gabriel said. As if to demonstrate, he clamped one hand around Lucio’s thigh and squeezed, tugging him back down.  
Lucio wasn’t a big guy by any stretch. He was used to looking up at other people; used to other guys being bigger than him. That still didn’t really mean much, because Gabriel was a big guy by big guy standards--Lucio figured he was at least 6’2” and built like a brick house besides. The other man’s thighs were like tree trunks; part of him wanted to kick a leg over and just straddle only ONE of his massive thighs just to give his hips a rest.  
The other part was enjoying the other man’s fondling his ass too much to do more than roll back into it, muffling his moans in the other man’s shoulder.  
But then Gabriel’s hands were in his locs, his fingers cool against the back of his hot neck, expertly kneading the muscle there. Lucio sat back with a little bubbling sound of pleasure rising out of his throat.  
Gabriel slipped his fingers up the hem of one of the legs of his boxers and the tips of his fingers skimmed Lucio’s asscrack, just barely, ghosting softly backwards.  
Lucio shivered all over, moaning softly.  
“Shhh,” Gabriel said, but then chuckled. “Everyone is going to think you have loud wet dreams, if you’re not careful.”  
Lucio gently--and pointlessly--shoved at the man’s expansive, muscled chest.  
“Do you want more?” he asked. This time he made the touch slower, more deliberate, the pads of two fingers just, JUST pressing against Lucio’s asshole.  
He turned his head, slinging his locs the other way with one arm, and sucked in a huge breath. A moment later, Gabriel pulled his hand out of his shorts--Lucio made a noise of complaint--before sliding it between them again and flicking the waistband of his shorts down.  
The cool room air was a shock against the wet head of his cock, and he knew from the pleased noise Gabriel made that he was already wet: the other man circled his forefinger and thumb and gently teased his foreskin back, offering the barest touch of pressure against the head.  
Lucio slumped over him, rocking his hips down and forward. Then Gabriel tightened his grip on the handful of ass he still had in the other hand, enough that Lucio sucked in a shuddering gasp of pleasure and went absolutely stiff.  
Gabriel chuckled. “You like that, huh? I could just play with your dick some more, and get you off that way...but like I said, I want your legs around me while I’m inside of you. Where’s your lube?”  
Lucio groaned softly. “I’m fuckin’ dreaming. I’m gonna wake up tomorrow with my draws all stuck to me’an’shit, an’ I’m gonna have to limp down to the washroom carryin’ my nasty sticky sheets...”  
Gabriel snorted a small laugh. “That’s what will happen if you keep wasting time. Get the lube.”  
Lucio groaned a little when he had to swing one leg over the other man’s huge thighs--Gabriel laughed a little--and he knelt beside the bed and dug the lube out of where he’d stashed it, in his underwear drawer.  
Gabriel frowned when he slapped the tube into his hands. “Oil-based? Naughty, naughty. Why were you complaining so much about condoms if the lube you have would have eaten holes in them anyway?”  
“You said you weren’t going to fuck me that way,” Lucio said.  
Gabriel made a considering rumble in his throat. Then without saying anything else he grabbed Lucio again, pulling him close; his big hands smoothed down Lucio’s back, his sides, going for double-handfuls of his ass again.  
Lucio hummed in pleasure, plastered against the other man’s broad chest, close enough he could smell him better now.  
Maybe it was his amp’s healing effect, but the man didn’t smell so much like blood or smoke or ashes anymore--he smelled like sweat, like musk. Then there was also the fainter smell of Lucio’s own hair stuff, magnified now because he was smelling it on someone else.  
Gabriel tugged twice on the hem of his boxers before he got the hint.  
“Unless you want me to rip them off of you,” he said, but even in the dark Lucio could see he was smiling.  
“Yeah, uh-uh,” Lucio said. “I like these ones.”  
“So take them off,” Gabriel said.  
“Yeah, I...” Lucio sat up, awkwardly rolled off the bigger man and spent the longest five seconds of his life trying to twist the waistband back around and kick his legs out of the boxers.  
Then he was back over the other man’s hips again, Gabriel making a pleased rumble underneath him.  
His hands were back on Lucio’s ass again a half-second later, fingertips of one hand kneading hard. The other, slicked and still slightly cool, slid up his asscrack in a smooth line from his balls to his asshole, slowly and tantalizingly enough that he tried to wriggle back onto the smoothing fingers.  
Gabriel obliged him by immediately sliding his index finger in to the second knuckle and curling it comfortably.  
Lucio bit off a squeal and clenched his toes, feeling sweat start all down his back and in his scalp.  
“Good?”  
“Mm--FUCK--yes,” Lucio muttered, huffing his breaths against the other man’s chest.  
Gabriel started slow, sliding the one finger in and out until Lucio started shuddering and thrusting back again; he added a second and Lucio moaned low in his throat, pressing his face tight to Gabriel’s chest.  
Lucio panted into his ear, “Let me suck your dick--”  
Gabriel shifted his grip from the hadnful of Lucio’s ass to a handful of locs, which he closed his fist in very carefully.  
The pressure on Lucio’s scalp was enough that prickles of pleasure shot all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes; his dick, already drooling a steady stream of precum, jumped twice between their bellies. He made a helpless, desperate noise.  
“You like that?” Gabriel chuckled. It wasn’t a snide question.  
Lucio sighed, shivering all over in barely-contained pleasure. “Yeah! FUCK yeah! Cuh--C’mon, man, let me suck your dick, anything--”  
“Later,” Gabriel said.  
Lucio had just enough time to process that there WOULD be a ‘later’ before Gabriel was moving his hand again, slick fingers sliding in and out of him, thick and perfect.  
Without meaning to, Lucio was pressing urgent, wet kisses to the side of the other man’s face, one of his own hands flat on the other man’s huge chest and the other on the side of his neck, feeling the tendons there jump when he moved his arm.  
“So--no kissing, no--no head, what do you want me to--come on, man, give me something--” Lucio said. He was out of breath and dimly aware that he wasn’t actually making sense.  
Gabriel actually paused, his fingers sliding out of Lucio’s ass.  
“Are you sure?” he said. “You shuldn’t ask for things you don’t understand.”  
“Are you--are you just not into kissing?”  
Gabriel was silent.  
“Okay, okay, I can take a hint. Sorry, fuck, I just...never mind,” Lucio mumbled. “Do you still want to--”  
Gabriel’s clean hand was in his hair again, this time just stroking. After a moment he very gently pressed a chaste kiss to the corner of Lucio’s mouth. When Lucio turned into the next kiss and got him full on the lips, he tasted--  
Nothing. Lucio gently nibbled at his bottom lip and to his surprise Gabriel kissed him back, still a gentle, chaste gesture. To his surprise, Gabriel was the one who opened his mouth, who let Lucio lick past his lips, inside him.  
The inside of his mouth was cooler than he expected, and he tasted faintly like blood, as if he’d bitten his tongue and swallowed.  
Lucio made a soft, desperate noise and licked into the other man’s mouth, rutting his cock against the other man’s washboard-hard stomach.  
Gabriel made a noise that was half-whmper half-growl and curled his fingers back into Lucio’s ass, swallowing Lucio’s cry of pleasure.  
He was the one to break the kiss, sucking in a huge shuddering breath. Lucio nosed along one high cheekbone until he found his earlobe, gently latched onto it and sucked. Gabriel shifted beneath him, sucking in a huge shaky gasp, himself, and turning his head to bare more of his neck for the same treatment. After a moment Lucio took the hint, kissing down the strong lines of his neck, the curve of his throat. Beneath him, the other man’s chest was heaving.  
Lucio managed to stuff one hand between their bodies and grabbed his aching cock, too hard at first in his excitement, enough that he flinched a little before finding a rhythm that worked with the way Gabriel was finger-fucking his ass.  
Gabriel stiffened under him, moaned softly into his mouth.  
His hand sped up, keeping the three fingers straight and just fucking Lucio until his whole body felt white-hot and tight with the urgent need to come.  
“Ohh, fuck,” Lucio whispered. “Oh god--”  
“Come on,” Gabriel said, against his temple. The hand that had been petting Lucio’s hair tightened into a fist again and gently held, Lucio’s face pressed with his cheek flush over the other man’s pounding heart.  
All at once Lucio exhaled hard, his whole body soaring with ecstasy, and Gabriel held him while he twitched and thrashed and came so hard he felt his legs nearly cramp.  
For a minute afterwards they just laid there catching their breath, with him listening to the thump of Gabriel’s heartbeat level off slowly, then sink back down to obscure faintness.  
“Hey,” he said. “That was pretty amazing. But you didn’t get off, did you? Seriously, what do you want me to do?”  
Gabriel laughed outright. It was a low, deep laugh, but he felt it was real nonetheless.  
“I want you to relax so when I pull my fingers out you don’t feel like you’re shitting part of your guts out,” Gabriel said.  
“Aww, sick! Man, come on, I just came so hard I saw the curvature of the earth, and you gotta ruin it talking like that?”  
Gabriel kissed him on the ear, too hard, and used Lucio tensing up as an excuse to quickly, carefully slide his fingers out of his ass.  
Lucio still groaned slightly, his ass feeling open and loose. His whole BODY felt open and loose. He was completely aware that they were stuck together at the navel by a pretty sizeable puddle of jizz, but it didn’t seem to matter too much; they were both warm enough that it didn’t feel unpleasent. Yet.  
“You want to suck my dick so bad, huh?” Gabriel said. There was laughter in his voice, but not mockery. “We’ll see. Maybe next time.”  
“What--”  
“It’s almost dawn. I don’t think your team will approve of your choice of...bedmates.”  
Lucio had nothing to say to that. The full impact was still hovering nebulously over his head, just outside his conscious thouhgts, like a mirage shimmering on the horizon.  
Later, after they’d wiped themselves down with a hot, wet towel Lucio fetched from the bathroom, and after he very carefully pretended not watch the other man get dressed in the lilac-gray dawnlight coming through his window, Lucio was still thinking of something to say.  
Gabriel beat him to the punch.  
“Lucio. It’s been far too long since I’ve had the pleasure,” Gabriel said. “Or been able to enjoy it at all.”  
And he left Lucio sitting there, still sweat-sticky and smelling of the other man, feeling both immensely gratified and yet somehow still unsatisfied.  
Three days later, Winston brought up news that the Vishkar warehouse facility had had three more explosions, and a structure fire that completely gutted the building, destroying everything inside it.  
Lucio wasn’t sure if it was right to feel so happy about such a gift.  
Still, every night after that, he left his amp on and his window unlocked, hopling like it was a talisman or beacon that would bring the other man back home. 

 


	6. Nightfall Chapter 3 WIP

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Notes: OKAY SO Agents under Gabriel’s command are being mysteriously “Reassigned” to different watchpoints and missions, without his control and sometime withous his knowledge at all. He tries to tell Ana but she doesn’t know anything, and suggests he talk to Reinhardt or Tobjorn since they’re European and most of his agents seem to be getting sent on missions over there. (Reinhart scoffs at the idea.)  
> ANYWAY at this point McCree has alreay joined Overwatch and Gabriel frieks out to find that he is going on a mission with Jack, that’s clasified so Jesse can’t even tell him where he’s going.   
> McCree comes back missing an arm an an eye an that’s how he got the metal one and how he’s able to o the Dead-eye. (Although Ana has to teach him how to do both of these, after he has a small existential crisis about how he Failed during the mision, and shamed his Boss, etc. :( ) **

Waiting rooms were always so damn cold, Gabriel thought.   
He wiped his nose again, willing it to stop running, and viciously stuffed the wadded-up tissue back into his jacket pocket. He checked his hand to make sure it was clean before going back to touch the hat again.  
The stupid hat, already batered, its rim notched now in more places than it had ever been.

Now, with schrapnel holes peppering one side, and a sooty smudge up under one side of the brim where its owner had fallen face-down and cruhed it under his face.   
If he stared close enough, he could actually see tiny flecks of blood around the shrapnel holes. When held to the light--or, out just in front of the white tabletop in front of him, they made a tiny galaxy’s worth of uneven white stars, some larger than others, one big enough to get the end of his pinky finger into.

He felt cold all over. He felt like someone was squeezing his stomach and throat at the same time, a constant pressure that would not abate.

He sat back in the chair, sighing, and looked up at the ceiling. Stark flat-white light of the ceiling lights; gray corrugated noise-cancelling ceiling panels.  
The hat, its material stiff between his hands. He could feel little bits of dirt and grit on it, here and there, and he tried to surreptitiously wipe them away without looking at them.  
He couldn’t look at it. 

If he looked, then he would have to think about how McCree must have looked when he lost it.   
His eyes prickled hot and angry, and his vision swam. The lights on the ceiling drifted away like he was leaning back into a cold bath, and he leaned forward again, coughing, and snatched the tissue out of his pocket to scrub at his eyes.

A moment later he heard the sound of shoes on the floor and his head jerked up to see Dr. Ziegler there. She was still wearing surgery scrubs, her hair under a puffy white bonnet but with locks poking free at her temples and the nape of her neck. The hair on her forehead was glued down with sweat. 

She looked haggard.  
His eyes went back down to McCree’s hat.  
“How is he?” he asked.

She hesitated. His whole soul flinched; he refused to move bodily until she spoke.  
“He is…stable,” she said.

The breath left his body at once, and a terrible weight lifted from him. He took another deep breath as fresh tears sprang to his eyes. Now he was fighting down a cautious smile. He ran a hand down his face.  
“He is?”

“Yes, he is.” Then she hesitated again, and a look of pain or sadness crossed her face. “Before he went into surgery he…he asked me…” She glanced away and looked back at him, before taking a deep breath. “He doesn’t want to see you.”  
Gabriel felt like someone had thrown ice in his face. 

“What? What do you mean? Is--is he--” he made a meaningless gesture with one hand, not even knowing what he meant, himself.   
She held up one hand, either as a placating gesture or as one of surrender. When she spoke next, her voice was brittle. “Due to doctor-patient confidentiality, I cannot tell you anything about his physical or mental state--”

“Angela, please--”  
“--Visiting hours tomorrow begin at 10:00 in the morning, and end at 5:00.” She said. Her eyes were glassy and mournful.   
Suddenly he felt cold for another reason altogether.

“Angela, are…are YOU all right?”  
She took another breath, which came shivering back out of her as a faint, suffocated sob.

“All five of the other team members are deceased. Two were pronounced dead on ar--arri--” She looked away, her mouth pressed into a wavering line. “Dead on arrival. I am so sorry for--for this, this is terribly unprofessional--”

“It’s all right. You’re human, too, and this isn’t a mission debriefing.” As if to make his point, he looked around them, at the otherwise-deserted waiting room.  
She checked the time on her pager before sinking down into the chair next to him and completely deflating. 

Her face in her hands, she took another breath and managed to get out, “How could they send them into that--” before the sobs strangled the words out of her.  
Gabriel felt like he was watching his own life on autopilot, or Spectate. He saw his own hand go to her shouler, then his arm his arm over her shoulders. He saw rather than felt the way her shoulders heaved under his arm, the force of her grief crushing her inwards and working her ribs like a bellows. 

“You did your job,” he said, feeling wrong and stupid. “You did your best. You’re one of the best doctors Overwatch has got. I know you didn’t let them go without a fight.”

“I’m a doctor,” she wept. “I’m supposed to save people! I’m supposed to SAVE people! And there was nothing I could do! An operating room full of state-of-the-art machinery, the best the world has to offer, and they--and they all still died! They STILL DIED!”

~

He held this thought in his mind as he looked down into the hospital bed, at Jesse’s still form. 

The young man was connected to half a dozen beeping machines and had countless wires connecting who-knew-what to who-knew-where. Connected to one of the bed’s side-rails there was a large transparent bottle with a plastic line connected to it, which appeared to be slowly filling with pinkish fluid too watery to be blood. 

Gabriel had stood beside the sickbed of more than one fellow soldier, and even the deathbed of one who was a dear friend--Pentecost had fought the cancer like a tiger, but it had gotten him in the end--and he was accustomed to hospitals.  
But the sight of the young man lying there beneath the white sheets--  
Gabriel swallowed.   
He was keeping up his end of the bargain. McCree WASN’T seeing him.

Half his face and part of the top of his head was swaddled in dense white bandages. They’d shaved his head, as well, an Gabriel could see several tiny lacerations on the exposed part of Jesse’s face that WAS visible. They had mostly healed over; he figured they’d used a med-capsule on him to help stabilize him, but then probably had to repoen the wounds to remove the shrapnel of whatever hit him. 

~

“Boss,” McCree said. His face was slack with horrified realization before Gabriel was leaning over him, shushing gently.  
“It’s okay, it’s all right, you’re safe.”

But McCree made a noise in his throat that sounded like he was choking, and he jerked in the bed, hard enough that Gabriel aborted any move he was making to touch the younger man. 

“Boss,” McCree said, again--bawled, this time. And when he managed to free his arms from the sheets, Gabriel saw why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Note: the apartment (townhouse, I like the idea of a townhouse, because Gabe actually strikes me as the kind of guy who likes flowers and gardening. Who else names an attack ‘Death Blossom’?) the home is actually Gabe’s, but Jesse stays there so much that the “guest room” is basically his room. Jack has all-but moved in as well, despite technically not living there, either; he has his own side of Gabe’s big bed, drawers in the dresser, etc. 
> 
> Jesse sees Gabe as his mentor/teacher but has a terrible hero-crush on Jack. Without knowing what’s going on (because Gabe doesn’t tell anyone anything about his feelings, and JAck doesn’t notice anything because he’s an Oblivious White Boy) Jesse ends up taking Jack’s side about a lot of issues, especially about the command posts, because although he works for Blackwatch, he admires Overwatch. Maybe wishes he could transfer/plans to transfer? And Gabe has NO idea, and would feel broadsided and abandoned when Jesse finally DID tell him. 
> 
> Ana tries to see what’s going on but he barely talks to her, despite being best friends. She knows they’re having relationship problems but doesn’t know the extent, again because Gabe is close-mouthed about his feelings and Jack is completely oblivious about how hurt Gabe is. She’s also not American so she doesn’t 100% Get the levels of racial nuance that are at play here, and she at first really does think it’s just relationship problems and that Gabe is maybe being a little too sensitive. But the more he explains, the more she understands how hurt he is, although she doesn’t understand WHY, and that makes her sort of…decide to stay On The Fence about the issues, so while she comforts Gabe, she also never indicts Jack for anything, and certainly never confronts him about anything.
> 
> Gabe no longer trusts Jack emotionally.**


End file.
